


Sympathica

by Moxibustion (RyuuzaKochou)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Barbara Gordon Knows All And Isn't Taking Your Shit, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Civilian Tim Drake, Dick Grayson is a good bro, Everybody Gets Hugs, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is Robin, Little Black Dress 2018, M/M, Tim Drake Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-10-27 09:56:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20758481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyuuzaKochou/pseuds/Moxibustion
Summary: Jason Todd is a fourteen year old Sentinel, struggling with senses, his place in the world and a legacy he's more than half convinced he'll never, ever live up to.Time Drake is an eleven year old Guide who can't connect with people, watches heroes from afar and yearns for more than a life of empty echoes and loneliness.One night, on a rooftop in Gotham, two unlikely souls meet.





	1. Chapter One – Evanidus (the Vanishing)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Museum Mishap](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13422138) by [PrettyMissKitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyMissKitty/pseuds/PrettyMissKitty). 

> I wrote this over a year ago for a short story challenge issued by Rough Trade. It was an entry into their annual Little Black Dress month and while I had mighty fun writing it, once the challenge was over it just kinda sat on my PC, gathering dust. I've decided it's time to let it see the light of day.
> 
> All the kudos and praise goes to njw for the astonishingly quick and much appreciated beta. Go check out njw's stories (https://archiveofourown.org/users/njw/pseuds/njw); they are the best!

Robin, aka Jason Peter Todd, had to admit that for a former street rat destined to amount to exactly nothing in this city, his life had taken a turn into the coolest, _ weirdest _ thriller movie ever conceived on a bet.

He cautiously stalked the dead roof space between the Wayne Enterprises West Business Park and the old amusement complex that had been left to decay into an urban maze of overgrown walkways, rusting rides, show pavilions and old arboretum greenhouses. He was being watched.

That’s why he was here.

Jason may be the ward of billionaire Bruce Wayne now but he was a Crime Alley kid born and bred. No child raised in the Bowery or any of the surrounding hard luck streets grew up without knowing when they were being watched. Kids that didn’t pick up that level of awareness usually ceased to be kids pretty damn quick, and often ceased to be at all.

This wasn’t even a Sentinel thing; this was just pure street instinct. Although the Sentinel thing did render this all a bit weird because if he was being watched he was well trained enough by now to instantly lock his over-the-horizon enhanced senses right on the potential threat.

Except he couldn’t. At _ all_.

Every time he tried to it felt like he was brushing _ something_, but Jason couldn’t grip it enough to tell what it was.

Batman remained skeptical about this watcher when Jason had reported the feeling. He was always careful to drive home to Jason that his senses, enhanced and useful though they were, could also be fooled – at times much more easily than an ordinary person’s could be. Jason’s were abnormally sensitive even by Sentinel standards because of what B called a ‘prolonged psychotic devolutionary episode’ which is what any normal person would call ‘going feral for over a year’. His dials were stuck on high volume. Three years of hard training had only taught Jason to process the influx, not mute them. B thought perhaps his senses were trying to fill an information gap that was intangible. That subconsciously Jason had an unacknowledged anxiety that was being expressed through his senses, turning the anxiety into an unknown watcher.

_ Fuck that _ , Jason huffed to himself as he made his way around the rusted old stacks to the crazed, jagged patchwork quilt of the Mile Greenhouse, whose inmates were poking up through the glass in some places now, left to fend for themselves when the money moved out. Batman could do all the painfully ironic psychoanalysis he wanted, Jason _ knew _ he was being watched. He could prove it.

Speaking of; a flash of black and red, nothing more than a sense of movement and a resplendent puff tail, darted out of the lengthening shadows. Darcy… well, actually, he was Darcy when Jason was Jason but he was Hood when Jason was Robin because Jason didn’t see any reason why Darcy couldn’t have a hero name too. Hood looked over at his Sentinel, tilted his triangular face knowingly, then darted off across the greenhouse apex towards the promenade that would eventually lead to what Jason thought may have been a water garden of some sort.

“Right,” Robin grinned behind his mask, vindicated. Every time Jason had felt those eyes on him he’d seen his spirit animal appear, scuttling up drainpipes and across parapets, seeking the source. Hood knew there was something here too. Even Batman wouldn’t argue with a spirit guide, though he’d probably subject it to an interrogation. B was like that.

Robin ran over the apex of the slanted greenhouse roof, dodging the trees now sticking up out of it, like he was running on a flat road. He may not be Dick Grayson, Jason acknowledged (sourly), but he was no fucking incompetent either. Even if Dickface was so good he could balance on a fucking cobweb, the enormous showoff.

It was a pretty time of the day. The twilight sky was every colour and rainbows glinted every which way off what was left of the glass in the glasshouse. It made even this broken down old place look kind of nice. Jason reflected that he’d come a long way in three years. That much colour three years ago would have meant instant, shrieking meltdown. It would have been way too much to process.

The fox led Jason to swing down off the greenhouse and onto the promenade, which was a really nice stone walkway with parapet that curved around the sunken faux Roman water garden. It was either dried up or swamped with stagnant algae now – and _ stank _ of it – but the promenade that ringed a storey above it was still flat and free of mostly everything but dead leaves. 

Darcy, or Hood, since they were in costume – rich red fur with black points and socks – gave a happy little jump as Jason grappled onto the promenade and hopped onto the faux stone guardrail. His ears were pointed eagerly forward. He’d seen the watcher. Jason _ knew _ his spirit guide would help him with this.

Robin unstrapped and unfolded his Robinata. Batman insisted the staff blade was called a naginata but Jason drew a line in the sand – if B could have Batarangs, Batmobiles, Batcomputers and every other thing under the sun bat-branded, Robin could have a Robinata. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Robin called, armoured, caped and masked under a lurid red sky, looking every inch the stalker-in-the-night. He could feel the pulse of adrenaline overtake him, the world sharpening to nearly painful clarity as his senses went along for the ride. He could taste the stagnant water like he was drinking it, feel the air currents like they were blustering storms. He saw red painting the world edge to edge.

Best action thriller ever.

He spun the Robinata like a baton. “I know you’re here,” he added in a mutter. He stretched out with his senses like he’d been taught. _ Yes _ , there it was, that indefinable _ thing _ that he couldn’t quite grip. There was a heartbeat, but it came intermittently, like the signal was scrambled. 

It was, from what Robin could tell, beating fast.

Robin made a show of peering about him, but in the corner of his eye he watched Hood stalking along the guardrail. He was intent upon… a bird?

That made Robin falter slightly. He was trained by the World’s Greatest Detective and that wasn’t just an empty platitude. B was _ good _ at his job. He’d trained Robin to be good. There was no way Robin would have missed a detail like that, or the sound of it arriving.

But that ceased to be a concern because in the next instant Darcy pounced and in the next half instant the radar static interfering with Robin’s sensory sweep stuttered, uncloaking a human figure sidling just inside his blind spot.

The little bird gave a high pitched cheep.

Robin lunged instinctively. “Ha!” He swung the Robinata hard at the figure before it could vanish again.

The world turned into a series of lurid snapshots, one coming lightning fast after the other, which coalesced into:

_ Guide! _

Then; _ kid! _

Then, with a jolt; _ edge! _

The last because _ guide _ and _ kid _ had forced Robin to wrench his shoulder flicking the Robinata off target so he didn’t _ hit the damn little kid _.

Unfortunately, the suddenly unbalanced swing caused him to overbalance which led him to shift his feet to correct, which of course put one of his boots squarely in a patch of damp leaves which rendered his boots roughly as traction-ready as a ballet shoe. His foot slid, he twisted to try to stay upright and ended up slaloming into the poor kid, who hit the guardrail with enough force to send him over.

Robin went with him, slamming the Robinata’s hook blade into the rail edge like a grapple. He grabbed the kid with one arm and hit the filament wire release with his thumb. The Robinata split in two, grapple wire unspooling for about three feet before the brakes kicked in with a joint yanking jolt. Robin and rescuee dangled, the poor kid’s sneakered feet maybe four feet from the stone ground below. Sentinel reflexes – you had to love ‘em.

“You okay?” Robin asked.

Wide blue eyes stared back at him. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Um…”

There was a whining noise. Startled, the kid fumbled for… what looked like a _ really _expensive camera, which was blinking and beeping warningly. He looked like he was trying to turn it off, but got there a beat too late.

The flash went off. Right in Robin’s face.

White _ filled the entire universe _.

Robin heard Hood give a yowl which echoed his yell of pain. Too much influx all at once sent Robin straight into a zone, the world suddenly blinding, white and empty.

His hands slipped from the Robinata. The kid landed with an unheard thud and then a whoosh of air as Jason landed on top of him like a caped crash dummy. Even at fourteen, Robin was an impressive slab of muscle.

The Robinata disengaged, dropped and landed on the back of Jason’s head like an editorial comment.

Yeah, action thriller movie all right.

Except when it turned into a screwball comedy.


	2. Chapter Two – Clypeus (the Wall)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jason get to know each other. Certain complications ensue.

It took a red hot minute, but eventually shapes and sounds congealed out of the endless white like heavy fog beginning to lift. Sounds were watery and distant but eventually sloshed to actual comprehension.

There was something in his hair, stroking it.

“…way, circulation… um pulse? Oh, god… okay, Sentinel, so, stimulus, respiration, coherence, reflex… um…”

“Orientation,” Jason croaked, finishing ye olde Sentinel First Aid protocol.

Jason felt his head jump abruptly. Whatever he was lying on had startled.

“Are you okay?” The voice came out very small.

Jason screwed his eyes shut for an instant before risking opening one a sliver. Darkness.

But that just meant the blast shield lenses had done their job and dropped over his eyes from his visor when the flash went off, blocking out the harsh stimulus. Jason forced himself to focus like he’d been taught and eventually was able to dial up past them. The world went from dark to shaded to sepia toned through the lenses. Jason blinked a couple of times but his senses seemed to be within acceptable parameters.

The hand moved from his hair as he shifted, forcing himself half upright. “Fuckity fuck,” Jason muttered to himself, rubbing his forehead with one hand. His eyeballs felt like they’d been lightly sautéed. Suddenly, he remembered he had an audience. “_ Don’t _ repeat that,” he jabbed a finger at the kid. Assaulting _ and _ corrupting the young. He was a shit Robin.

The kid gave a little huff. “I’ve heard swear words before.”

“No kidding,” Jason heaved himself off the kid properly and sat back, running a hand over the back of his bruised head. While he was off in sensory hell twilight had faded into night, the last of it a mere purple in the sky. Jason calculated the odds and carefully flipped up the lenses, relieved that his eyes were no worse for wear and his levels surprisingly steady. He took the time to survey the kid properly and didn’t like what he saw at all. “What are you, six?”

The kid flushed in mortal insult. “I’m _ eleven_.”

If Jason wasn’t a Sentinel he’d have proclaimed bullshit – no _ way _ someone that small should have hit double digits. “Well, mister eleven,” Jason decided not to pursue it, “let me see your eyes for a sec. That was a pretty hard knock you took.”

The kid flushed again – his skin must be some kind of porcelain, it was so naturally pale. This red appeared to be in shame. “I’m sorry,” his voice was tiny. “About the camera flash.”

“Sh-shoot kid, I ain’t mad at ya,” Jason reassured him, scooching a bit closer. “I was the one who swung first. Now, lemme take a look, kay?” Jason pressed his thumbs underneath the kid’s too-big eyes and carefully scrutinized the pupils. All clear, from what he could see. He unstrapped one of his gauntlets and yanked loose a hand. “Okay. Would it be okay if I just checked your ribs? I ain’t no lightweight and I damn near must have pasted you when I landed. I won’t if you don’t want me to,” he added. Jason had _ issues _ about consent.

“Oh… um. Okay,” the kid blinked. He seemed surprised Jason would take the time. “They don’t hurt, though.”

“They don’t always start to hurt straight away,” Jason explained. “Take a nice deep breath. Okay. And another? Good job.” Nothing. Jason relaxed, relieved. He’d hated the thought of hurting some kid, even by accident.

The kid made a noise, but when Jason looked at him questioningly, he just said. “Tickles.”

He poked the kid just to make him snort before withdrawing. “What’s your name, kid?”

“I’m Tim,” replied the kid.

“Tim, huh?” Jason raised an eyebrow. “Just Tim? Like Cher? Or… is that a Robin badge on your sweater?”

Tim went as red as beets, belatedly trying to cover up the incriminating evidence.

“Seriously? They sell those?” Jason was aware of some rip-off bat merch circulating Gotham. Sometimes he bought the shirts just to annoy B. But Robin stuff?

Jason didn’t think it was possible, but Tim went even redder. Jason was legitimately concerned he was going to pass out from all the blood rushing to his face.

“No,” Tim admitted. “My housekeeper made it for me.”

Jason stared at him. “You like… Robin? What about Batman?”

Tim blinked at him. “Batman’s great. Gotham needs him. But Robin’s _ amazing_. Robin’s the reason Batman does what he does. Without Robin, Batman’s just another person trying to control Gotham. Robin is the conscience. He’s the moral absolute. Plus he’s awesome.”

Jason stared it this strange little anachronism that had wandered, unbidden, into his life. “Oh. Thanks. I mean, I never really thought about it like that before.”

Tim was starting to look very sorry for his gush. His ears glowed.

Jason ruffled his hair, charmed. “It’s nice to have a fan. I didn’t reckon I had a ton of those.”

“You’ve got lots,” Tim promised staunchly.

Jason stamped down his bitterness. He’d inherited lots, he didn’t say, from the Golden Boy Dick Grayson.

“Just as many as the first Robin,” Tim added, neatly turning the world on its ear.

“What?” Jason gaped at him. “Wait. What?”

“You,” Tim said, wide eyed. “You’ve got lots of fans. As many as the first Robin.”

Jason felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. “What makes you… okay, I’m Robin, kid. There is only one.”

“One at a time,” Tim correctly calmly. “There was one, but he’s taller than you. Now there’s you. The other one was—” Tim’s eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped like a stone.

“Tim!” Jason lunged for him and caught him before he hit the floor. “Shit, shit,” he scanned the kid’s biorhythms. What did he miss? Was the kid bleeding on his fucking brain or something? “You fucking idiot, Todd.” The kid was so pale and small. Jason was about to pick the kid up and sprint for the nearest ER when the kid came to like one coming out of sleep.

“Ouch,” Tim mumbled, scrubbing at his eyes like he hadn’t just scared _ a fucking century off Jason’s life_.

“What?” Jason snapped frantically, running his fingers through the longish dark hair, searching for telltale hotspots. “Is it your head? Where does it hurt?”

“It’s not... I’m okay,” Tim told him firmly, grabbing at Jason’s hand.

“The hell you are,” Jason protested.

“I am,” Tim insisted. “Every time I think of Batman and his _ possible_,” he stressed the word. “Civilian identity, I hit the Wall.”

Jason’s mouth hung open. “You do?”

“Hard,” Tim added miserably.

_But_ _that shouldn’t be possible_, Jason wanted to say.

The Wall was… well, okay, the_ thing _ to remember was that Batman was a Guide.

It really was the most perfect cover in the history of covers, because a lone figure going above and beyond protecting the city, seemingly with superhuman fighting abilities, reflexes and tracking abilities?

People sure as shit didn’t think _ Guide_.

They thought _ Sentinel_.

And Batman was a master deceiver. It was easy enough for someone of his mental and physical level to _ fake _ being a Sentinel, even when people got up close and personal.

That fact Bruce Wayne was a licensed Guide – on the fucking register and everything – was just another layer of separation between him and the Bat. It was so perfect, no one would ever make the necessary logic leap. Bruce Wayne had made sure that he _ barely _ qualified; enough so that he could explain why such a manifestly dim bulb socialite was capable of such distressingly accurate emotional insights that appeared largely accidental and also why people were drawn to his charm. Bruce Wayne wasn’t strong enough to forge a bond with anyone, nor did it appear, even at a second glance, that he had the emotional wherewithal to anchor a Sentinel.

But Bruce Wayne was the most powerful Guide in the world. So good the tests couldn’t even measure him. He just couldn’t let _ anyone _ know that he was. 

Bruce was a fucking master of mental techniques that they didn’t teach in the Guide School and, as far as Jason could tell, didn’t teach anywhere except the League of Assassins, who’d trained the Bat before he’d been the Bat. The League of Assassins had no use for diplomats, councilors and healers. They only had use for weapons.

Bruce was a weapon.

And one of his defenses was the _ Clypeus_.

It meant _ shield_, but in Jason’s mind a shield was something you put down after you used it. B’s stronghold defense was a fucking _ Wall_, like the kid said.

Without going into the fifty page dissertation into the neuroscience of it, Jason had had it explained to him like this.

Feeling begins at the moment of stimulus – sight, hearing, whatever. _ Feeling_, not thought. Thought was a lightning quick second, but still second. When people unconsciously recognize a pattern, a suspicion – a feeling – starts to form. When the feeling is centred around Bruce Wayne or something Bruce Wayne adjacent – Alfred, Dick, Jason, Batman, Robin, etc – the thinker forged an unconscious connection directly to Bruce Wayne via the spirit plane. The connection was insubstantial, as light as a cobweb, but that’s when it hit the _ Clypeus_. The _ Clypeus _ dispersed the feeling like smoke, sending only fragments back to the originator where they could not be reformed. The brain then simply discarded the pieces along with the rest of the information the brain summarily discards daily. The person doing the thinking wasn’t even aware the connection was made or the thought was blocked, because it happened below the conscious mind.

What that means, in essence, is Jason could shout in the middle of Gotham that he was Robin. The knowledge wouldn’t stick into the minds of anyone that heard it. It would simply exist and then be labeled as unimportant and forgotten, unknowingly broken into pieces against the _ Clypeus_.

B always maintained he didn’t invent the Clypeus and that other Guides could and had learned it. Jason severely doubted any Wall was as high or as impenetrable as B’s, though.

Except…

“Does that happen to you a lot?” Jason demanded as Tim wriggled out of his grip.

“Ever since I was four,” Tim shrugged, way too fucking placid. “That’s when I came online.”

Jason whistled. “Shit kid. And I thought my online trigger was fucking bad. _ Don’t _ use that word.”

“It’s not so bad. I just trained myself to think the right way. Batman is Batman. Robin I is not Robin anymore. Robin II is… you. As long as I don’t try to think that you might be anyone else, I’m fine. So you’re Robin. Just Robin and nothing else.” Suddenly Tim scrambled up, anxiety written all over his face. “Lizzy!”

“Who?” Jason got up with him, scanning for a second heartbeat.

But Tim was off and running towards the steps that led back to the promenade. Jason grabbed the Robinata and the kids camera before racing after him, managing to overtake him before he hit the promenade and tossing the camera Tim’s way before getting his staff at the ready.

There was no one there but Hood.

… who was curled up around a small brown form.

“Lizzy!” Tim ran for the fox and plucked the little brown bird from the ground. “I’m sorry Lizzy. I tried not to.”

Jason thought for one horrified moment that Tim’s spirit animal was actually dead.

But no, the bird fluttered her wings and fixed her Guide with a reproachful look from her big dark eyes and hooked, bird of prey like beak. Jason couldn’t tell what she was. She seemed all wings and head and tiny little feet.

“She okay?” Jason asked gruffly as the little ball of brown feathers began cheeping and slowly crawled up Tim’s arm.

Lizzy cheeped at him grumpily.

Jason grinned. “I’ve never seen a baby spirit guide before.”

Tim scowled at him. “She’s not a baby!” He seemed mortally offended on behalf of his spirit guide. “She’s fully grown!”

“But she’s tiny,” Jason crouched down to get a good look. Hood stood on his hind legs. “And her feet are all stubby. And her wings are too big. She’s a babybird.”

“She’s a swift!” Tim furiously protested his spirit guide’s impugning. “They’re supposed to be that way. They’re special!”

“Okay, okay,” Jason held up his hands in mock surrender. “I promise, I ain’t saying she ain’t impressive.”

“They are special,” Tim subsided slightly, still smarting. “They can stay aloft for ten months straight without once landing. They don’t come down to sleep or eat or anything. They just fly. They can go nearly a hundred miles an hour horizontally.”

Jason had to admit that was pretty cool.

“Besides,” Tim looked at Darcy dubiously. “Yours isn’t like a... a wolf or something.”

“Hey!” Jason put an arm around Hood. “Don’t be down on foxes. Foxes are survivor prodigies. They’re good enough strategists to fool _ humans _. And they’re gentleman thieves. Who doesn’t like a gentleman thief, right Hood?”

“Hood,” Tim’s lips twitched. “Robin and Hood.” Then he burst out laughing.

“We’re a pair of outlaws, us,” Jason proclaimed proudly. “Urban survivors and fighters.”

Tim lifted his camera as if to take a picture, but then his face fell as he looked at it. Now that Jason could see it closely, he could see the shattered lens.

“Busted, huh?” Jason grimaced. “Sorry, kid.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Tim sighed. “I have parts at home. I practically built it myself.” Lizzy cheeped softly from where she clung to the back of Tim’s Robin sweater like a tiny backpack. “I can fix it.”

“Is that why you’re out here?” Robin asked, his sense of responsibility suddenly coming back to the fore. “To take pictures?”

Tim nodded.

“Of Batman and me?”

Tim looked startled.

“C’mon, babybird, I ain’t stupid,” Robin poked him. “I’ve felt you before when I’ve been on patrol. That’s why I came looking for you. Someone was following us. I don’t like not knowin’ what’s watching me.”

“You came looking for me?” Tim seemed stunned anyone would bother. “I didn’t… I mean, I wasn’t trying to cause trouble or anything. I just…”

“You’re a fan,” Robin poked the kid’s Robin badge again. “Yeah, I kinda figured.”

Tim flushed.

“You know it’s not safe out here, right?” Robin told him gently. “I don’t think your parents would be very happy to hear about you walking around Gotham at night.”

Tim shrugged. “My parents are in Chile,” he replied quietly. “They won’t be back for months yet. I’m sorry if I disturbed your patrolling. I guess my _ Evanidus _ wasn’t very good.”

“Your what now?” Robin blinked, filing away the bit about Tim’s parents for later.

“_Evanidus_. Look over there,” Tim jerked a chin. “I’ll show you.”

“Over where?” Robin glanced and then looked back at—

Tim was gone.

Jason lunged for the spot where Tim had been and nearly bowled the kid over grabbing him. “Holy _ shit _ babybird,” Robin kept his grip on the kid. “What… how the hell did you do that?”

“That’s _ Evanidus_,” Tim stated proudly. “The Vanishing. It’s a Guide technique. You just shrink your presence so much you disappear from notice. Like people just ignore you. It doesn’t work very well on Sentinels, though. But Sentinels don’t usually focus on a person unless they have an intent towards the Sentinel. If I have no intent, I just become part of the background.”

Holy shit, that was impressive. And awfully familiar.

“Did you learn that in the Guide School?” Robin asked slowly.

Tim shook his head. “I don’t go to Guide School.”

The fuck? The kid was online! Sure the Sentinel Guide Center had something to say about that!

“Mother says the quality of education at the Gotham Guide is not quite up to standard.”

The kids ears went red as he said it, meaning he recognized that for the pure snobbery it was and was embarrassed about it.

“They hire me Guide tutors instead,” the kid finished.

“There are Guide tutors now?” Robin repeated blankly.

The sound of the Clocktower proclaiming nine cut across their little chat. Robin looked about wildly before starting to swear viciously.

“Fucking fuck, is that the fucking time? _ Fuck_, B’s going to kill me. Okay!” Robin yanked a card out of his utility belt and shoved it into the kid’s hands. “You got a phone, right? Okay, call that number and tell the service you need a pick up. The account to charge is on the back.” Robin seized the kid around the shoulders sternly. “You got _ straight home _ understand? Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred schmeckles. I’ll _ know _ if you don’t, capiche?”

Tim looked mulish, but conceded. Probably because the little brat’s camera was broken and he couldn’t actually take pictures.

Whatever. There was no way no how Jason was leaving an unbonded baby guide to wander around after dark in motherfucking _ Gotham_. He didn’t care what kind of Vulcan mind tricks the kid had up his sleeve.

“Okay. Gotta go!” Robin took off at a run, strapping his Robinata to his back as he sprinted away. He yelled back over his shoulder “And don’t use any of the words I just used!”

Tim stared after him, bemused.

Then his face split into a huge grin.

He’d met Robin!

And Robin was awesome!


	3. Chronoreception (the sense of time)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of a vigilante is simultaneously very cool and extremely horrible. Also, further complications ensue...

Up close and personal, there wasn’t very much to like about being a sidekick to a lunatic vigilante in a bat costume. The training was relentless, cheat days were laughed at in disbelief, the hours were akin to slave labour and for that matter Jason sure as shit didn’t get paid. He was constantly dogged by the feeling he was trying to live about ten different lives and he’d go mental eventually trying to keep all the lies straight. Detective work was maybe one, sparkling leap of deduction surrounded by hour upon hour of deathless data mining. If Jason lived the rest of his life never having to wade through another ream of legal records about which criminal owned which allotment of this town he’d die happy.

But _ this_, this made up for it all.

Shoot, lock, leap…

_ …fly! _

Robin glided in a perfect arc between the buildings, pedestrians clueless below. He landed without a beat of pause and leapt for the balcony railing, reeling in the grapple gun one handed while casting the Robinata like a spear with the other. He barely waited for the hook blade to connect and grip the filament wire before he was running sideways, leaping over windows like they were potholes on the road.

He disengaged the Robinata with a flick of his wrist and dropped into freefall with only the sound of the Robinata rewinding and clicking back together and the rush of the wind in his ears. He arced the grapple gun and threaded the needle of a billboard support with not half a second to spare.

Yes! This was living at its finest. In these wild moments, where his pulse pounded and his body sang with adrenaline, his senses were at their most controlled and controllable. They did everything he wanted them to do, all the usual background discomforts he’d learned to ignore sloughed away.

He felt normal.

Thankfully he was close now to where he really should have been an hour ago. B was going to be _ pissed_.

Speaking of which…

Robin’s earbud clicked. “_Robin, status._” The tone flat and terse.

Ooh, yeah. Pissed.

Robin engaged the callback, absently dancing over hurdles made of stacks. “En route, Bossman.”

“_I’m on site. Where you should be already,_” Batman replied to this pointedly. “_Our window is closing_.”

“Same entrance as planned?” Robin double checked as he took a long swing into the docklands proper and began hopscotching containers.

“_Skylight, south west corner,_” Batman confirmed. “_Assuming, of course, you can reach here before they handover._”

Robin clicked off his earpiece as he sailed between one warehouse and another, right over the spot where Batman was brooding away. “Then keep up, old man!” he called down to him before continuing on his merry way.

He was pretty sure he could hear it when B popped a vein. That was how he showed affection, Robin was certain.

Five, four, three, two, one, leap! Robin ascribed a beautiful rainbow of an arc in the air, plummeting precisely towards a dirty skylight in an old shipping office huddled at the back of the container yard. He could hear heartbeats within, smell the stink of chemicals and bleach, see himself grow nearer and nearer in the dim reflection of the night sky…

He cast his Robinata, shattering the skylight. Robin dropped through the hole he’d made for himself, grapple finding purchase and mitigating his headlong descent into something manageable. He dropped past a layer of catwalks to land right on a trestle in a shower of glass and screams, brightly coloured little pills exploding every which way as what looked like migrant girls all scattered like mice. Robin felt his rage rise up like a familiar old friend. Some of those girls were younger than _ Tim _.

“Hey boys,” he grinned, or bared his teeth at the guards. “Burning the midnight oil? You’re all so fucking _ diligent_.” Robin’s staff cracked the temple of the first one to reach for his gun and he kicked two more in the head as he leapt from the trestle and into the fray.

He got his bulletproof armoured self between the girls who had scrambled for the doorway and the thugs when the guns started going off. The slugs fucking stung but the armour Batman made for him was worth every obscene penny spent. Robin wielded Robinata and fist in equal measure, kicking, flipping, tripping and punching his way through various hired muscle. At the other end near the bay doors, what looked like covered army trucks were revving up.

“Batman, they’re about to rabbit with the stash,” Robin gritted his teeth as a bullet hit his shoulder, but flattened against the armour. “Whenever you’re ready!”

Robin had to admit, whatever B’s other flaws, the man knew how to make a fucking _ impressive _ entrance. Cape fully open, gliding in like silent death, the Batman crashed through the windows like they were paper, disdaining a wall of bullets that met the sight of him. He fell upon the men trying to escape like a vengeful bat god.

Robin took the opportunity to knock out his last few stragglers – those that hadn’t started to run like sensible men – and hurry over to the crying girls who simply curled in corners, unable to run anywhere. They squeaked and cowered when he got too close, which made Robin rage all over again, but he did manage to make them understand that they needed to get behind the barricade of trestles he’d hastily shoved together for them.

By the time he was done Batman was finished with his lot.

“There are more in the yard,” Robin reported, head cocked and listening. “They’re massing. The buyer bought his own security, _ fuck_.”

“Language,” Batman grunted, pulling useful gadgets from his belt. “Agent A, report.”

Alfred’s steady voice came over the comms. “_Twenty eight possible assailants tagged. Drone infrared shows probable semi-automatic armor piercers. The buyer’s trucks are heavily shielded. Weight metrics indicate there might be a rail gun._”

Batman and Robin both flicked a look at the trestle barricade. Those kinds of weapons would rip through this entire building like so much paper.

Robin considered. “Fog and drop?”

“Dispersal is too wide,” Batman shook his head. “Friendly fire eating.”

Robin sighed. He _ hated _ friendly fire eating. He got out his flash bangs and his laser pointer.

“Agent A, some smoke cover if you would,” Batman added.

“_Right away, sir.” _

They waited as cries of confusion filled the yard outside as a heretofore unnoticed bat drone dropped a payload of smoke bombs into their midst.

“Start from the north quadrant. Work your way clockwise,” Batman ordered him. “Recite as you go. Human senses.”

“Right now, B?” Robin groaned, but Batman had already stalked off in the sweep of a cape.

“Fine,” Robin grumbled. Yep, definitely still pissed. He clicked open comms, hurled his flash bangs out one of the open bay doors, and slid out into the choking fog in the mass of confused yells and swears that followed.

“Vision,” Robin began using a simple green laser pointer to make a sentry drop and roll like he was being sighted by a sniper. He kicked the man in the head as he went by. One down. “Sight. Perception of colour, shade, form and depth. Primary sense of the human race.” The fog wasn’t a barrier. Not for him.

“Audition,” Robin silently slid around a pair of thugs coughing in the smoke. He knocked their heads together. Two, three. “Hearing. Perception of sound waves and frequencies. Watch your six, B, some asshole just drew a knife.”

“_Language. Keep moving_.”

He could hear more swearing, though it wasn’t in English. He flicked a birdarang at one of the assholes trying to sneak back towards the warehouse. _ Clock _ , clean out. Four. “Gustation. Taste. Some people have it,” he shook his head at one of the muscle who leapt out of the fog at him, mouth glinting with an entire full set of gaudy gold teeth. “Some people don’t.” _ Bam_! He was going back to his dentist in the near future. Five.

“Olfaction,” Robin sighed as he kept creeping. They were getting savvier. “Smell. _ Jesus," _he cursed as one guy got him into a headlock. Robin rammed his head back into the goons nose. “_Deodorant_, guys. Learn it. Love it.” That one got away.

“Somatosensation,” Robin continued. “Touch. For hugs and Gotham _ kisses _” he punched one goon in the back of the head and then ducked. The idiot turned and swung wildly at a figure, which turned out to be a comrade. Comrade swung back. Robin left them to it.

“Nociception,” Robin murmured, unstrapping his Robinata. “Sense of pain. That’s for my enemies, not for me.” He neatly hooked a man’s ankle, sending him careening back into what sounded like a woman, who swore like a sailor. She got off a shot before Robin could club her with the staff. Robin hissed, dialed down the sting and scuttled behind a truck as the noise drew followers.

“_Robin _?”

“Relax B,” Robin assured him as yells and swears filled the room. He could hear someone in charge yelling about leaving, someone else swearing about payment. Good. Dissent in the ranks. “Proprioception. The sense of where every part of your body is relative to every other part. Useful for punching,” _ Punch_. “And accuracy,” _ punch, punch_.

“Equilibrioception,” Robin’s voice turned slightly sour. “Balance. Enough said.” He high kicked just to prove he could do better than some showoff circus boy, balancing expertly en pointe.

“Chemoreception,” Robin scuttled under one of the trucks just as a loose pack of armed men scoured their way past. The fog was lifting and they were getting bolder and more organized. “Perception of toxins and oxygen.” Robin thought about this, unhooked an incendiary from his belt, and tossed it into a truck that _ stank _ of poison. “Fire in the hole, B.”

“_Robin_,” Batman growled warningly, but Robin had strapped his lenses and hunkered behind another truck.

For an instant the world turned into a hellstorm of orange. Robin was upwind of the gas produced, just as well. The semi-organized searchers were now a mess of ants again.

“Thermoreception,” Robin recited dutifully. “Heat.” He heard the rumble of an engine as at least a couple of them made to escape with their addictive cargo. There was another thundering boom and a flare of orange. Ha! B couldn’t complain if he’d had the same idea.

“Magnetoreception,” Robin continued, picking off targets as they staggered out of the smoke. There couldn’t be many left and he’d need his rebreather soon. “Magnetic fields. Seriously B, I still think you’re making that one up.”

“_GCPD is en route, gentlemen_.” Alfred dry voice broke into their comm line. “_I suggest you hurry._”

Robin sighed. “Okay. Uh, what else? Interoception. The sense of what’s going on inside your own body.” Robin could feel the smoke beginning to scratch at his lungs. He was pushing it as it was, even with B’s special breathing techniques.

“Mechanoreception,” Robin felt an ominous rattle through his boots. “Sense of vibration. B, rail gun!”

“Death to the Bat!” someone screamed.

Robin heard the telltale click-shunt of big ammo sliding into place and raced for the sound. If that idiot set _ that _ thing off in this yard, concrete enclosed on three sizes, it would be a ricochet chamber of _ death_.

Batman rose out of the smoke like a vampire, right in the gun sight that poked out the back of the truck. It was so unexpected that the would-be Rambo froze and ended up dancing at the end of a Bat Taser.

“Jesus. B,” Robin rasped as he came up. Sucking in that breath of smoke was a mistake. He could feel great heaving coughs start to kick inside his hypersensitive lungs. “Cutting…it…fine…”

It was also a mistake to hyperfocus on a battlefield. A second man, who had been cowering under the tarp cover of the truck, popped from his hiding spot and punched out in sheer terror, catching Robin squarely in the jaw. He was vaguely aware of B knocking the guy’s teeth out as he lay flat on his back.

Bright side? Coughing had been shunted aside momentarily from the adrenaline.

“You missed one,” Batman informed him gravely as he helped Robin to his feet.

“Yeah, I kinda got that, B,” Robin hissed. He could hear sirens now, and not at a Sentinel level distance either. Shit fuck, time to go.

“No,” B actually looked faintly amused. Asshole. “You missed a sense.”

Robin tried to get his scattered brain in gear. “Oh. Yeah. Chronoreception.”

“As in, a sense of time passing,” Batman raised an eyebrow at his partner. “As a Sentinel, you can’t technically lose track of it.”

Robin was ready to start defending himself against the disappointed reproof in that voice, but started heaving great hacking coughs instead. Batman somehow found his rebreather and slapped it on him.

Leaving the police with evidence, witnesses and clean up, the two of them disappeared, slightly gracelessly, into the night.

Across town, Tim rose dizzily from where he’d fallen on the floor of his bedroom, tears streaming and red from coughing and jaw throbbing.

What…?

“Oh no,” he breathed, blue eyes wide. “Sympathica.”


	4. Genesis (Formation)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Complications are explained... sort of.

The night never ended when the bad guys were down. You had to get home, you had to get the armor off – which was kind of a production – you had to write up findings, log samples for analysis, cross check chemical signatures with other drugs in the database.

Well, Bruce had to do that stuff tonight. Jason got a round in the chemical shower and then got his ass planted in medical, strapped to a humidifier for an hour, miserably hacking and coughing up mucus. He broke free of the iron grip of Alfred somewhere around two in the morning and found Bruce still at the computer bank, listening to the recordings he’d taken from the warehouse pre-explosions.

“I know that language,” Jason spoke up finally. It had been bugging him because he hadn’t been able to place it.

Bruce turned and raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not sure exactly what it was called,” Jason admitted. “One of the drag queens that used to live in mom’s apartment block used to use words like that. She was from… shit, what was the name? Some tiny little spit-across country. Botoga? Bogoto?”

“Bogatago?” Bruce tried.

Jason pointed. “That’s the one. Cocaine based economy. Like, literally, that’s all they fucking grow there.”

“Hmm,” Bruce added more notes to the system. “Could you translate?”

Jason had an uncanny and brilliant ear for languages. He shrugged. “Upload it to my batpod. Let’s find out.”

Jason was shirtless and barefoot, dressed in silk lined track pants. He spent a minute scrubbing his still damp hair with a towel and was startled when he felt two fingers press against his temple. Abruptly his levels lined up nicely, his head stopped aching, his skin stopped itching and his nose finally cleared the stink of smoke. Bruce took his fingers away and resumed typing.

_ Jesus_, what must it be like inside B’s head? Jason wondered. Having a mind so attuned to every other mind around him, so sensitive to the distress of others that he taught himself to simply go in and flick switches to turn off pain as easy as someone else turned on a light and _ doing it while not even concentrating fully_. Like he did it absently, like Jason’s total comfort was just a throwaway gift to give. Jason couldn’t even imagine what Gotham must feel like to Bruce. It was times like this you realized that going Batman was, maybe, the sanest thing in the world.

“So,” Bruce turned on his ward and concentrated fully. “What happened tonight? Because this thing between us is not going to work unless you’re exactly where I expect you to be.”

Jason winced. “Hey, dial it down on the eyebrow, B. You don’t get to be so judgy, not when I owe you a big, fat ‘I told you so’. My ‘unacknowledged anxiety’ turned out to be pretty fucking flesh and blood.”

Bruce raised the other eyebrow and waved at him to continue.

“Guide,” Jason reported. “Unbonded. He’s got the street smarts of three day old roadkill, but he’s got this trick of making himself seem invisible. He writes himself into the background of people’s heads. Sound familiar?”

Bruce definitely picked up on the subtext. So did Alfred, who put down the piece of armor he was cleaning and moved over to the Batcomputer. “Name?”

“Tim,” Jason shrugged at them. “I didn’t have time for much else before the raid deadline. Which I _ made,_ by the way. He called it the _ Evanidus _ and it was pretty fucking good, B. I needed Darcy to help me find him.”

B didn’t look at all pleased with the dearth of information. “That’s straight out of the League of Assassins. If one of their agents is following us…”

“Yeah, this kid ain’t anyone’s psychokiller, B, trust me. Oh and that reminds me. Alf?” He turned to the older man in the room, who was busy tapping away on the computer, no doubt re-opening surveillance logs for the last few months, trying to find their watcher. “You might know. Is there such a thing as a Guide tutor? Tim said he didn’t go to the GGS.”

Alfred paused delicately at the keyboard. “Technically yes. I qualified as a Guide educator when Master Bruce was young. They are used for low level Guides at times. However, you do not appear to be speaking of a low level Guide.”

“Tim? No fucking way,” Jason felt a smile tug at his lips. “He said he was online at four.”

Bruce was giving his ward a strange look. “You liked him.”

“Kid’s a hopeless mess, B,” Jason shook his head. “A babybird. You should’ve seen him flapping around. Poor kid was about ready to spank himself when he sent me into zone.”

“What?”

“Nah, it’s okay. It’s kinda my fault; I mighta pushed him over a balcony rail first,” Jason admitted sheepishly.

“_What _?”

“Plus I’m pretty sure that he’s a genius,” Jason continued while Bruce rubbed his temples. “Like, a real proper genius. He’s mastered a Guide technique that advanced, plus he pretty much built his own bespoke camera, plus he figured out how to track us through the city. He’s actually pretty cool.”

“Jason,” Bruce spoke slowly, still looking at him strangely. “He has mastered a technique used by the League of Assassins. He has tracked us through the city, like a trained assassin. He sent you into a zone, which is how I’d expect an assassin to take a Sentinel out and he’s an unbonded Guide which is exactly the kind of lure the League of Assassins keeps on hand for Sentinels. Do you see a pattern emerging? You shouldn’t trust this man. He’s a danger to you.”

Jason stared at him for a second before bursting out laughing. “_ Jesus_, B. You mean well but sometimes you’re comedy gold.”

“Refute my evidence, then,” Bruce seemed intrigued, not irritated by Jason’s brush off. He trusted Jason’s ability to gauge a threat and to assess human nature.

“Well for one thing, when I said kid I meant _ kid,_” Jason smirked. “He’s eleven. He _ looks _ about seven.”

Bruce’s eyebrow twitched, a sign that had surprised him. “I hate to say it, Jay-lad, but the League takes them that young.”

“He went lobster red when I asked him if he was a fan,” Jason rolled his eyes. “Even a League assassin couldn’t fake an involuntary reaction like that. Trust me, B, sometimes a kid is just a kid.”

Bruce did a lightning fast deduction. “You want to find out who is _ teaching _ the kid.”

“Damn skippy I do,” Jason growled. “You said they take ‘em young. How do they recruit, I wonder?”

“Hm,” Bruce speculated. “Do you think he’ll go back to the place you found him?”

“We could wait for that,” Jason nodded. “Or we could just activate the trackers I put in his camera and shoes. Come on, I’m not _ that _inept.”

Bruce snorted. “Don’t be such a wise guy, smartass. Alfred?”

“Tracker information will be forthcoming shortly,” Alfred completed the necessary logons.

“Check the car service account too,” Jason added. “I paid for the kid’s ride home.”

“Very good, young sir,” Alfred nodded. “And as a further addition to your last question to me, there are Guide educators certified by the Gotham Sentinel and Guide Council but they are only legally allowed to interact with Guides that are below a certain level – like Master Bruce,” Alfred’s dry voice took on a slight irony. “There is also a cottage industry of privately owned businesses, claiming to be trained Sentinel and Guide teachers and consultants. They are typically very expensive, though the quality of the education actually conveyed can be shockingly poor. I believe the Council is forever trying to crack down on these businesses and push through legal requirements to the effect of having no Sentinel-Guide adjacent industry without Council approval. As yet, however, there is no legal barrier to starting a Sentinel-Guide adjacent service business in Gotham, or, indeed, federally.”

“So he could be being taught by some fucking pedophile and there’s no, like, system keeping track. Awesome,” Jason spat.

“Language,” Bruce sighed. He lived in hope of rooting out at least some of the street marks from his protégé.

Alfred’s frown got both of their attention. “The trackers appear to have stopped roughly two miles south of here.”

“_Seriously _? The little brat stalked us home?” Jason gaped.

“No,” Bruce frowned. “He didn’t. Tim, right? Alfred, December 22nd, the Christmas gala, at the receiving line. We have the photos?”

Alfred wordlessly accessed them. Bruce flicked through with lightning speed, stopping abruptly at one of the publicity shots.

“That’s him!” Jason pointed. It was. A small figure in a ridiculously expensive suit for a kid, looking proper if blank faced, standing next to two glamorous and very tanned parents.

“Jack and Janet Drake,” Bruce murmured. “And their son, Timothy. Tim. Our nearest neighbors, in fact. I didn’t even know he was a Guide.”

“Yeah? Well he’s a strong one, B,” Jason nodded. “That’s the other thing? Your _ Clypeus_? The kid keeps knocking against it. He _ knows _ it’s there. He even figured out this little Robin ain’t the original model.”

Bruce scowled. “That makes finding his teacher and assessing the possible threat a priority. That’s your assignment for now. Find out everything you can about him and the people in his life.”

“Another case,” Jason sighed.

“Be careful, Jason,” Bruce cautioned him. “You’re hard wired to trust Guides and that will work against your objectivity. You can’t afford to trust Tim Drake until we know more about his situation.”

“Relax B,” Jason looked at the picture. “I just met the kid. How close can we possibly get in that time?

*

Jason had covertly shadowed Tim all day at a distance, getting a feel for his normal schedule and habits. For starters, Tim Drake might be the only kid of the rich set who actually used public transport to get to school. He even hauled his bike along with him on the bus because the distance from the Drake Estate to the nearest bus stop was a fair hike. From then on he was a school inmate like usual until the final bell.

Jason watched as Tim walked out of the super-rich kid school he went to. _ High school_. Jason had been right, Timmy was an actual genius.

And like most actual geniuses, he seemed to have problems on the friends front.

The teens he went to school with didn’t seem to know what to do with him. They barely seemed to notice him, leading Jason to wonder just how often he used the _ Evanidus_. It was weird. Guides were usually – if not actively social – comfortable in company. They were good with people.

Tim drifted through the world like a little ghost.

And he also had, like, zero situational awareness. He walked through the day with a pensive and distant look on his face, brain clearly miles detached from his body. That was how Jason managed – without actually sneaking at all – to walk up to him holding a triple choc thickshake that the kid didn’t even register until it was right in front of his face.

“There you go kid,” Jason grinned at him. He wasn’t in costume, but that hardly mattered. Robin was Robin. Any other thought would lead to another faceplant into the Wall.

“Robin?” Tim gaped. His heart went off like a death metal concert. “Oh my god, what are you doing here?” He looked around frantically as if there were a hundred eavesdroppers closing in around the bike racks.

“Relax kid,” Jason grinned. “Robin also counts as an actual name. It’s kinda useful. Here,” he shook the thickshake temptingly.

Tim took it, not looking any calmer. “I’m sorry!” he blurted. “I’m really, really sorry! I’m trying to fix it! I think it’s a sympathica but I’ve got to test it out and I’m not really sure how it formed but I think it was when you zoned out in the complex but it’s not a jungo or totum so we should—”

“Hey, whoa!” Jason grabbed the kid by the shoulders before he vibrated off the ground. “Calm down, okay? Relax. You know I have, like, no friggin idea what you’re talking about, right?”

Tim gaped at him. “Oh. Maybe… maybe it’s one way?”

“What is… you know what? We’re not doing this here. You and me are going to the park, babybird. We’re going to sit there, you’re going to drink your weight in sugary goodness, I’m going to get a chilli dog because I am actually starving to death right now and then we’ll talk about what’s bothering you. After we talk about what’s bothering me.”

“Something’s bothering you?” Tim asked anxiously.

“Yeah kid,” Jason reached out gently and scrubbed a thumb on Tim’s cheek, wiping away concealer and revealing a purple majesty of a bruise. “Something’s _ really fucking bothering me_. No repeatsies. Got your helmet? Great. I’m driving. Drink your chocolate, milk’s good for babybird bones.”

Tim didn’t have the wherewithal to protest the arrangement. He perched behind Jason with his helmet on, one hand holding his thickshake and the other around Jason’s waist. Even though he knew the kid was still anxious, he felt heartened when the kid relaxed into the ride, clearly enjoying death defying turns and fast straights. Jason could see Lizzy the swift darting happily in and out, flying literal circles around them while Darcy paced steadily alongside. Apparently babybird liked to fly, just like Jason.

Eventually they reached Robbinsville Park and headed deep into the riding trails. They left the bike at one of the public racks and Jason led the way to the chilli dog vendor as promised. They took their greasy loot (Jason had more or less forced some fries on the kid) down to one of the more secluded picnic tables near the faux waterfall.

“Okay,” Jason jabbed a finger at Tim who was nervously nibbling on a fry. “Full disclosure. I ain’t mad, I’m never going to be mad, at you. Okay? Stop looking at me like I’m going to stomp on ya, babybird. You’re not in any trouble. But I need to know who punched you.”

“Um…the sympathica…” Tim mumbled.

“We’ll get to your thing next, babybird, promise,” Jason shook his head. “My thing first. _ Who fucking punched you, and don’t repeat that_. You won’t be in _ any _ trouble, no matter what the answer is.”

“Your thing has to do with my thing,” Tim blurted. “No one punched me. _ You _ got punched. Last night. And… I don’t know, you choked on something? You coughed a lot, I know that.”

Silence. Jason’s chilli dog slowly cooled in the breeze while he absorbed that.

“Okay.” He suddenly spoke flatly. “Let’s start with your thing.”

Tim suddenly looked miserable. “I’m really sorry.”

“Hey, you remember what I said,” Jason replied steadily. “You’re not in trouble and I’m not mad. That’s still true.”

“Um… I think we formed a sympathica?” Tim explained.

“Yeah, I got no idea what that is, babybird.” Jason took a bite; where he was raised food didn’t get wasted.

“It’s a kind of bond.”

Jason nearly choked to death. “_What _ ?” he croaked when Tim had finished pounding his back. “You mean like a… a _ bond _ bond. Shit, do you even know what that entails?” Jason could feel himself going redder than Tim.

Tim stared at him for one excruciatingly blank second before grimacing. “It’s not… well, _ yes_, I know what you mean and _ yes _ I know about… that bit. My parents are scientists, sort of. They believe in early education so, you know… no storks or cabbage patch lies for me. But this isn’t that kind of bond. There are different kinds of Sentinel and Guide bonds. Different levels.”

“Really?” Jason hadn’t heard that bit. Mind you, he was a part time attendee of the Sentinel School at best.

Tim fell into robot lecturer mode. “The most common Sentinel Guide bond is the _ jungo_, or marriage. That’s the one most of them fall into pretty quickly. The other is the _ totum_, or totality – that’s a familial or pack link between various members of clan or tribe, and between parents and children. But before you can reach jungo or totum you have to go through layers of bonds. There’s _ sensitiva _ bonds that have been achieved by pairs who haven’t actually met yet. There’s the _ genesis_, which forms in the instant two meet and _ nascentus_, for those that have met but… haven’t reached jungo yet.

“The sympathica is like, off to the side of these,” Tim added. “It’s not really in the hierarchy, like unitatis. Achieving these kinds of bonds is rare. A sympathica isn’t jungo at all. It’s an exchange of physical sensation and shared knowledge. I think… I still have to do research, but I think it’s mostly… medical? Sort of. Like the bond was formed purely so we can keep tabs on each other’s wellbeing, but that’s all it’s going to drive us to do. It might have been something old Guide healers used for their patients, I think.”

“O…kay,” Jason had finished his chilli dog and was now mulling frantically and trying not to freak the fuck out. “I’m gonna try something.” Never trust, Bruce taught him; _test_. “I’m gonna close my eyes. I need you to do something… like, I dunno, pinch yourself. Okay?”

“Okay,” Tim nodded.

Jason closed his eyes, trying to keep from stretching out with his senses. He felt the kid move and then…

_ Tap, tap_.

Jason spun around, absolutely certain someone had snuck up behind him to tap him on the shoulder. There was no one.

In front of him, Tim’s fingers still rested on the ridge of his bony shoulder.

Jason stared. “_Fuck_.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tim replied dismally. “Don’t repeat.”


	5. Conscienta (the Awareness)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trying to map the edges of Tim's life is like walking a labyrinth.

Tim Drake’s day began at four in the morning. He slammed a hand down on his alarm like he lived in hope of breaking it, staggered up, downed a coffee that the machine had produced at the sound of his alarm, then proclaimed himself human.

He got up in his expansive room that still had a small bed in it. There were no posters, but there was a bookshelf that was stuffed to the rafters with an eclectic selection of books. On one wall there was a map of South America with pins in it. Next to it was a massive scale map of Gotham with rather more pins and strings crisscrossing it, surrounded by tacked up cards with writing on them.

Then he did the exercises his gymnastics tutor told him to do every day and then the katas his judo instructor told him to practice every day. He wouldn’t ever be as good as Robin – I or II – but Tim was committed to living as close to the standard as he could reasonably get. His mother wasn’t happy – she thought it was all very low brow – so he took fencing lessons too. His father had been absently pleased; Jack Drake believed physical confidence was a necessary and vital part of running an enterprise and had a vague idea that Tim was quiet and shy because he lacked this.

Tim decided not to correct him.

Then he did meditation, which he’d taught himself to do. The good thing about being Jack and Janet Drake’s son is he had learned, by sheer proximity, the value of meticulous and thorough research. There were no sweeping statements made in the Drake household. You had a thoroughly informed opinion that you could back up with verifiable evidence and submit to a peer review, or you were silent.

Tim had spent a lot of his childhood silent.

Tim didn’t venture onto the spirit plane very much. His meticulous research skills had firmly established the fact that travelling to the spirit plane was not a thing for a novice to do deliberately without training or guidance. Reputable sources confirmed that while someone might briefly stray there accidentally and come to no real harm, to deliberately send yourself there with no failsafes or contingencies was a risky venture. There were young Guides in coma wards the world over who had decided to go in untrained and unprepared and had gotten lost.

The meditation helped him to start establishing a rough boundary on the sympathica he now shared with Robin (_Robin! _Tim still squeed a bit). Robin had gone to bed early and he hadn’t patrolled last night, but Robin’s appearances were deliberately random, so that wasn’t unusual. Tim had felt Robin concentrating very hard early in the evening and felt a psychosomatic buzz in his hands at one point that he couldn’t place. He also felt muffled pressure on his knuckles, like Robin was punching something – probably a bag, because he was wearing gloves.

Tim filed these observations away carefully, mentally reminding himself to crosscheck them later. Tim doubted whether Robin had gotten anything more interesting that the ghost sensation of typing from Tim last night.

Robin’s emotions were harder to parse. Tim also reminded himself to check with Robin if emotions also went back through the sympathica to him. Tim calculated only a 27% percent likelihood, though. After all, Tim was a Guide and he was a confirmed empath. He’d be picking up on emotions, sympathica or not. Robin’s were hard to get a read on unless Tim was close to him, but that was the Wall at work.

It must be nice, Tim thought wistfully. To be so protected. So cared for.

What little he could get past both the Wall and Robin’s exceptional personal shielding – bat training, no doubt – was that Robin was worried about him. Tim was baffled by this. Flattered, but baffled.

Tim readied himself and then cast a _ Conscienta_. He was very proud of this technique; it was the one he had mastered first and also the one that had come the easiest to him. Tim was sure this technique was his specific mastery.

There was a breath, and then the _ awareness _flooded in.

His parents were in Chile. Tim could pinpoint their exact location. He knew they’d left Lequena and were heading towards Cerro Aucanquilcha. His mother was driving. His father was asleep. The current locations and actions of teachers he knew, his old housekeeper Mrs. Mac, some of the students he knew at school and others streamed past in his mind. Most were parsed and discarded as irrelevant, some were viewed with care – Mrs. Mac was baking, she also felt content when she was baking – but they all marched past Tim’s cerebral cortex like a marching band of everyone he’d ever met.

That was the conscienta. Tim only had to meet a person once; then he could find them wherever they were and wherever they ended up. Unless something like the Wall was blocking him off. When he tracked Batman and Robin in Gotham it was down to good old fashioned detective work.

This was interesting. There were new blips of information coming to him via the conscienta. They were all young girls. They were in an immigration department halfway house in midtown. They were anxious, worried about what was going to happen to them now. Tim had never met them and they weren’t in the immediate vicinity of Tim, which is the other way you could use the conscienta.

_ Robin _ had met them, though. Tim was getting information on them through Robin. Probably on the night of the raid where Robin had been punched. Huh. This was an interesting development; it indicated that the shared knowledge component was as Tim had read. Robin had met them so they were now a part of Tim’s conscienta. Not the bad guys though. There appeared to be some correlation between Robin’s protective nature and people he deemed relevant.

Tim guessed that made sense.

Suddenly his heart sank and he stopped the conscienta. This could not continue. Tim had to find a way to break this bond. He may not ever be a Batman or a Robin, but he liked to think that he lived to the same moral code they did. Forcing a bond with someone was no better than rape. In certain ways it could be even more violating. Tim hadn’t thought properly about what he was doing when he pulled Robin out of his zone. He was a Guide and Robin was a Sentinel. It was at the very least a strong possibility that _ some _sort of connection would form, even if it wasn’t the full Sentinel Guide bond.

Tim hadn’t thought about it at the time. He’d panicked. He’d been terrified that Robin would stop breathing, that he’d have _ killed Robin_. He had to fix this somehow. His late night researching had yielded precious little answers.

It was now seven in the morning. Tim would have to hurry if he was going to make the bus to Brentwood Academy. He carefully stuck a pin in the map of South America before he flew down the stairs still pulling on his uniform as he went. When he got to the kitchen he measured out a level cup of what was quite frankly the most disgusting and tasteless muesli ever to exist. Tim’s current Guide tutor had also been put in charge of getting weekly groceries delivered and, well, she had _ theories _ about why Tim was so defective in the Guide department, so his diet was bland, low fat and small portioned.

He ate it dry – milk didn’t improve it and there wasn’t any left in any case – and used the time between excruciating bites to set up a GoFundMe for the Bogatagon girls that were stranded and alone in Gotham. He casually hacked the Gotham Gazette and police intranets and found pictures of the clearly frightened girls being gently reassured by social workers and police officers. Some had chemical burns from whatever dangerous work the drug dealers had them doing. The initial police reports suggested there would be more than one lost, lonely body to find in Gotham harbor.

Tim wrote a viciously heartfelt plea for the page, set up a labyrinth of IP addresses linked to hundreds of Drake Industries subsidiaries hidden within nesting dolls of shell corporations, programmed in a numbers randomizer and linked it all back to the GoFundMe where donations would go into it in a steady stream over the next week. He set a healthy six figure goal and then shotgun blasted it across various social media platforms under pseudonyms. There was a 92% probability that Wayne Enterprises would match or double what was raised.

By the time he was finished it was time to go. He’d probably have to pedal like crazy to make the right bus now. He hastily closed his notebook, yanked his phone off the charger, checked that he had his textbooks and power packs, and heard a bell ring.

Tim paused. That last bit wasn’t in the routine.

It wasn’t the doorbell. It had sounded like a bicycle bell.

“C’mon babybird, we’re going to be late!” Robin yelled from the front of the house.

Gaping in surprise, Tim snatched up his helmet and bag and raced for the door. Unbelievably, he’d heard right; Robin was there, waiting for him with his own red bike in hand. Hood was too. The fox padded up to him, looking immensely pleased.

Robin grinned at his gaping mouth. “Catching flies, babybird. Come on, helmet on, let’s go.”

As Tim strapped on his helmet he looked at the bike, which was one of those ultra lightweight, ultra fast ones that cost as much as a small car. It was also not to factory standard. It had a passenger seat. And stirrup spokes on the back wheel. And a basket that already had Robin’s bag in it with room for one more. The weld seams were shiny and fresh.

The buzzing in Tim’s hands last night had been power tools. Robin had defaced a _ very _ expensive bike to add a passenger seat. For _Tim._

Tim was and remained completely baffled by Robin. He didn’t understand this _ at all_.

But God, that bike sure flew. Especially with Robin at the helm. They got to the bus stop in record time and sat together under the shelter. Robin was so impressive. He wasn’t even out of breath.

“I had a good breakfast this morning but I still feel hungry,” Robin frowned. “Is that you? You did eat breakfast, right?”

“I did. I’m just on a special diet right now, so there wasn’t very much,” Tim replied, surprised by the feeling of upset he got from Robin about it.

Robin’s mouth open and shut and few times, poleaxed. “What the actual fuck now? A diet for _ what _ exactly? Because you weigh about as much as my _ leg, _ kid.”

They curtailed the discussion as the bus rolled up. Not many people around here took the bus, so they had their choice of seats. Robin firmly led him to the back and herded him into a seat near the window.

“Seriously? A diet?” Robin demanded when they’d sat down. “The only diet you need is one that’ll help you gain about twenty pounds so you stop looking like a stick figure.”

Tim flushed. “My Guide tutor thinks, um,” Tim wondered how he was supposed to explain this. “I’m not a very good Guide,” he blurted suddenly. “Like I’m not… I don’t really understand people very well? I can analyze their emotional input but I can’t really,” Tim waved his hands, searching for the right words. “Help them. I never really know what to say to them or how to make them feel better, like a Guide usually does. Um. People don’t find me very soothing. Um, _ at all_.”

Robin gave a huff of laughter, but he didn’t seem to be laughing at Tim. “So you’re a bit socially awkward. So what? That’s hardly a crime.”

Tim felt immensely good about hearing that from his hero. “Yes, but Guides are _ supposed _ to be good with people.”

“I dunno about that,” Robin refuted. “I know at least one who’s the biggest damn misanthrope on the planet.”

Tim was fascinated, but knew better than to ask. “My tutor thinks that my lack of a Guide aura and lack of proper shielding ability is down to my inability to properly connect to the spirit plane. I mean, I went there when I was six but stopped doing it after I realized I was doing it because it’s dangerous to do that without training. She thinks that if I try low key physical deprivation that I’ll forge a better connection to the spiritual plane. You know, leave the physical behind?”

Tim was briefly completely swamped in an ocean of white hot fire. He swallowed.

“Waiting a fucking minute,” Robin snarled, face twisted with rage. “Are you, Tim Drake, actually telling me that your fucking tutor is _ fucking starving you_?”

“I get… enough,” Tim replied, shrinking back. “It’s not very tasty or very appealing, but I get enough. I checked the caloric count. It’s low but it’s within acceptable levels.”

Robin visibly calmed himself down. “Babybird. That’s fucking _ bullshit_. If it was enough for your age and body type you wouldn’t be fucking hungry.” Robin’s blue eyes narrowed, burning hot still. “I was hungry yesterday too when I came to pick you up. Was that the sympathica? _ Shit_, how long have you been _ on _ this thing?”

“Six months,” Tim admittedly quietly.

“And you don’t ever cheat?” Robin demanded.

“Sometimes,” Tim nodded. “Mother and father clean out the pantry before they leave on trips. My tutor is in charge of getting my weekly groceries and she checks my lunch card to make sure I don’t get extra snacks. But sometimes I’ll do papers for the students and they pay me in cash. When all else fails I’ve got an industrial size tub of peanut butter hidden in the main bedroom walk in.”

Robin swore long and viciously in Spanish.

“I don’t think she means any harm,” Tim added quietly. Robin looked at him in disbelief. “I mean, she’s not doing it maliciously or anything. She really believes this will make me a better Guide. I can feel that.”

“Fuck that shit, babybird. That bitch must be blind and stupid to think that’s any way to train _ anyone_. You being socially awkward doesn’t make you a bad Guide.” Robin said.

“I can’t make people happy, Robin,” Tim said softly to his feet. “I can’t even make my parents happy to be with me.”

Jason, as Robin, felt his throat close up.

“You’re my favourite Robin,” Tim continued, oblivious to his companion’s distress. “Even more than Robin I. I respect him a lot, he started me on my Robin fandom and he’s amazing but even he can’t reach Gotham people like you do. He’s a Wanderer. He doesn’t connect with places. Whenever you go out, it’s always so obvious that you’re going out to protect _ your people_. You’re on the ground with them, you talk to them, you work and sweat and bleed for them. No one tries as hard as you do for them. Even Batman. I’m a Guide and I can’t connect to people the way you do. I don’t really understand them on a basic level. I know this. A swift is my spirit guide for a reason. They’re fine in the meta, flying up high,” Tim smiled sadly. “On the ground, face to face? They’re a bit hopeless.”

Lizzy cheeped at him from where she’d appeared, clinging to his back again. She rubbed her face against his cheek.

Jason felt Darcy press against his leg. He was flummoxed. He couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“When I want to fix something,” Tim drew out a slender notebook and opened it to show Robin the GoFundMe. “This is the best I can do. Not as a Guide; just as a Drake.”

“You did this last night?” Robin asked, his voice hoarse.

“This morning, when I had breakfast. It didn’t take long. I’ve got the revenue streams system lined up permanently. I do things like that all the time,” Tim nodded. “Photographing Batman and Robin means I inevitably end up photographing a lot of innocent victims and bystanders as well. You can’t be there in the moment taking shots and then just decide to ignore it afterwards. Especially when you can feel it too.”

Jason hugged him. Hard. Tim didn’t know quite what to do about this. Lizzy cheeped at him until he put his arms around Robin and hugged back.

“You’re a great Guide, Tim,” Robin declared. “I’ll fight any fucker to the death who says otherwise. Now get your stuff,” he grabbed the bike from the luggage rack. “I’m taking you to the nearest diner. You need some bacon, stat.”


	6. Memiens (the Remembering)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason encounters both Dick and Tim's mysterious tutor. Both meetings go about as well as you'd expect.

For one week, two weeks, three weeks, they got the schedule down pat. Jason would pick Tim up, feed him, give him a cooler bag with his lunch in it, take him to school, pedal to his own school, while away the time pretending to be a poorly educated street kid while deconstructing and reconstructing Voltaire, Shakespeare, Austen and Kant in their respective native languages in his head. Jesus, having a public persona blew.

(When he couldn’t stand his fellow students butchering Spanish any longer he’d activate his ear piece and listen to his batpod, parsing out Bogatagon phrase words until he teased out its South American Hebrew dialect roots. After that, understanding came.)

After that little torment he booked it out of the school doors and pedaled back to Tim’s school, stopping for after school snacks on the way. Jason declared a moratorium on any and all school work; they went to arcades, aquariums and theme parks, they went mini golfing where Tim proved himself to be a bloody minded competitive little shit, they went to a poetry slam that was Tim’s idea but Jason reckoned he suggested it for Jason’s benefit. The tough guy persona Jason usually cultivated out of habit and necessity was but a thin candy coating that Tim busted through with his unstoppable brain every observation he made.

Tim had never done _ any _ of those things before, which made Jason quietly stew with anger. As nice as it was to have Tim look at him like he’d passed him the moon and thrown in the stars gratis every time he took the time to go out with him or compliment him, Jason couldn’t deny that it all meant that Tim was starving to death in more ways than one. This was the kind of deprivation one should see in the Bowery, not Bristol.

Jason still went out on patrol. There were no big active cases that needed fists going on right now, just general level street malaise. Jason spent his time obsessing over non-lethal, non-wounding countermeasures, suddenly hyperaware that every blow he struck and was struck with was being transferred along the sympathica.

Jason knew Bruce had noticed the sudden changes in his impulse levels and fighting styles. He hadn’t brought it up yet but Jason sensed that storm brewing on the horizon. He hadn’t told his mentor about the sympathica. He was worried about what Bruce would do to the kid if he did. Bruce wouldn’t do anything cruel, Jason conceded. B wasn’t a monster. But he _ was _ all about the Mission and that sometimes rendered him – for a Guide – emotionally tone deaf.

Jason’s reports on the progress of his case with Tim had been brusque and brief. He had sarcastically pointed out he couldn’t use Bat interrogation techniques on the kid, after all; and it also might be a tiny bit telling if he showed up all the time with bruises from street fighting. That had bought him a little time, that and the Bogatagon designer drug case that was taking up Bruce’s attention.

But the leads were drying up and three weeks of sparring without Jason landing a single blow, grappling only? Sometimes B watched Jason like he was legitimately scared Jason was dying.

It turned out Jason was bracing for the wrong shoe.

The other one landed like a steel toed kick to the head when he came down for breakfast on a Saturday and there saw none other than _ Dick Fucking Grayson_.

“Little Wing,” the stupid fathead beamed at him, totally oblivious to Jason’s thunderous expression. “Good morning! Come sit.”

“What are you doing here?” Jason growled, not moving a muscle. The fact that Darcy was going up to greet Auriu like an old friend and the magnificent, almost completely black lion was flopping down to play with him like a kitten was not helping his mood any. Darcy was a _ traitor_.

“Manners, Master Jason,” Alfred spoke deceptively mildly.

Jason caved; forget B, everyone knew who not to mess with in this family. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Good morning,” he muttered. “But seriously, what are you doing here? I thought you and BG were shacked up and doing your naked thing in Bludhaven permanently?”

“Jason,” Bruce groaned from behind his paper. The tension in the room wasn’t high so he and Dick hadn’t fought… yet.

“What? He was,” Jason pointed out, helping himself to some OJ.

“We haven’t fully bonded yet. The Commissioner would _ kill me with a shotgun _ unless we’re both twenty, one,” Dick replied, grinning. “And two, can’t I come home and just visit the family?” He turned big, beaming blue eyes on Jason who recoiled from the glow like a vampire.

“Uh, no?” Jason snapped. “The only time you’ve been here in the last two years is to pick up your shit or yell at B about how he’s an ass and I’m a fucking rabid animal!”

Dick’s one hundred percent cheer wilted slightly.

Bruce put down his newspaper. “_Jason_,” his tone was a warning. “That’s enough. Dick apologized. You accepted. That’s the end of it.”

Jason gritted his teeth. “Yeah,” he abandoned his breakfast. “And that’s _ all _of it. He’s not my friend and I’m definitely not his. I don’t know why he’s suddenly making nice, but I’m not interested,” Jason had hit his acceptable limit. “Thanks for breakfast, Alf, but I’ve got to get going.”

“Jason, wait—”

“Jason!” Bruce called after him. “Where are you going?”

“Out! I’m on a case, B, remember?” Jason yelled back from the hall. He considered it a minor victory that he didn’t slam the door, but that was mostly fear of Alfred’s disapproval rather than any kind of self discipline.

Jason opted to walk to the Drake Estate, trying to let off the head of steam he’d built up.

Okay, B wasn’t actually wrong, Dick and Jason were mostly in cease fire mode now but their start had been rocky as fuck.

Batman had carried Jason off the streets one night when the young Sentinel, who had been totally feral for over a year at that point, had leapt into a fight between Batman and some random goons. Some spark of Sentinel imperative had survived the insanity Jason’s overloaded senses had spiraled him into. He’d jumped in to protect a Guide.

Dick, former circus boy and current last of the Wandering Sentinels, had been gone from the Manor by then. His Roma heritage and Wanderer instincts had kicked in fully when he’d turned seventeen. Wandering Sentinels felt the itch, they needed to travel. They were desperately unhappy trapped in one place.

Bruce had not taken the idea of any of his flock breaking out from under his protection well.

Dick had not taken Bruce’s reaction to his need to spread his wings well.

In the middle of this powder keg Jason, emaciated, wounded, scared and more than half mad, had been dropped.

There was no way it was going to end well.

It hadn’t.

Let’s just say Dick’s first introduction to Jason had been Jason going for his throat like a mad dog after a fight with Bruce had gotten too heated. Jason didn’t even remember it. His memories of that time were painfully vivid but unconnected impressions, his mind half burnt out with sensory overload.

Dick had struck back, ironically for the same reason as Jason; he was protecting Bruce.

It had taken a year for their relationship to improve to the point where they could be in the same room without coming to blows. Jason’s temper was hair trigger on a good day and for all his sunny disposition Dick had the shrieking mad Roma hot blood when riled. Both of them were way too stubborn to blink first.

Dick had (Jason smelled the intervention of Alfred) eventually thawed towards Jason. He had apologized and Dick was a fucking _ puppy _ when he apologized. Even Jason’s famous ability to hold a grudge couldn’t survive it intact enough to make him kick.

Held at gunpoint Jason might, _ might_, admit that some of the resentment he clung to was not so much Dick’s starting of the feud and dismissal of Jason’s suitability to be Robin, but Jason’s own feelings of inadequacy. He knew he’d never be Dick Grayson – not in B’s head or in his heart. Dick was the son, Jason was just the soldier. He thought Willis had beaten the daddy issues out of him but apparently fucking not.

Jason climbed the stone wall between the Drake and Wayne properties and walked along it for a half mile before jumping down the other side and pacing down to the Drake Estate.

Tim was home. “Hi Robin!” the kid beamed at him. It made Jason feel better. Tim was always a hundred percent happy to see him every time.

“Hey babybird,” Jason ruffled his hair. “No tutors today?” The kid had _ so many tutors_. Jason had taken to haunting the corners of his extracurricular classes after school when they couldn’t do a cannonball run through various arcades. His teachers were perplexed by his presence but allowed it.

Except for the judo instructor. He took one look at Jason’s bearing and physique and hauled him out on the mats and snapped at him to take the juniors through the simple forms while he did one on one with the advanced ones. He was a taciturn, bitter, take-no-shit and give-no-shits curmudgeon. Jason kinda loved him.

“My Guide tutor’s coming today,” Tim lost some of his cheer.

Oh. Jason winced at his dumbass self. For three weeks he had successfully avoided coming to see Tim on the days when his Guide tutor would be in the room even though it was contrary to the case he was on.

Jason’s bullshit excuse was that he was trying to be subtle, like he told B. He was trying to find out about all the people in Tim’s life, which meant deep diving on research into some of these cottage industry Guide tutors. A very small margin of them seemed to be legit, or at least making an effort to be legit. The rest were the biggest bunch of leeches, drugged up dreamers and con artists Jason had ever seen, and this was coming from a kid out of the Bowery.

Jason’s somewhat less bullshit excuse was that he wasn’t sure that when he met this tutor he wouldn’t accidentally-on-purpose turn their nose inside out. Either he’d be guilty of assault as Jason Todd-Wayne, which would be a paparazzi shit storm of epic proportions _ or _ they would be a member of the League of Assassins in which case Jason would have a death match on his hands, with Tim in the fucking middle. Either way his lay low cover would be completely blown.

His totally honest excuse was he liked hanging out with Tim. It had become – weirdness of the sympathica aside, which wasn’t even weird anymore anyway – the best part of Jason’s day, barring maybe leaping across rooftops in the dead of night. It made Jason feel like a selfish asshole, though, like he was basking in Tim’s obvious worship to stroke his own ego.

He had the excuse of hanging out with Tim while the case was on. Once it was completed, Jason would be stuck having to explain why he a) still hung out with an eleven year old who didn’t go to the same school as him and b) why he was still avoiding his usual take no prisoners fighting method. B might be emotionally tone deaf and but he wasn’t stupid. He’d smell a rat faster than a Sentinel.

Jason had balanced on the knife edge by very carefully ensuring that he and this tutor were like ships passing in the night… on different oceans.

Until now.

Fuck.

But Jason couldn’t abandon the kid to his fate. He resolved to be controlled and delicate. He could do that. Who said he couldn’t?

“You eaten? Oh, and what happened to your hand last night?” Jason had felt a brief stab in his ring finger sometime around midnight

Tim waved a bandaged finger ruefully. “I finally got replacement parts for my camera,” he told Jason as he led the way into the house. “I was cleaning out the old lens because I can use the aperture for parts, but there was a shard stuck in there I missed.”

“Babybird, you and me gotta talk about acceptable bedtimes,” Jason sighed.

“You the vigilante?” Tim raised an eyebrow.

“Listen to the _ sass_,” Jason knuckled the kid’s head. “I’ve trained you so well.”

“No you haven’t,” Tim muttered mutinously, which made Jason grin wider. One of the hopeful ideas that Tim had floated early on was Jason training him, which Jason had firmly scuttled. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Tim was capable, but with his starvation diet he wouldn’t have nearly the amount of stamina needed to learn Bat techniques. Jason sternly stated that Tim needed to get his health optimal before starting that level of training.

Secretly, Jason had also looked through the training manuals. Maybe in a year he could start showing Tim something. There was precious little in B’s books that concerned someone with Tim’s body type though. Bruce and Jason were both tall and broad (well, Jason was going to be, plus he was pretty street hardened) and Dick might be a beanpole but he went into the regimen with triple joints, a spine made of rubber and sinews that could tow a truck from circus training. Tim, through no fault of his own, wasn’t nearly at that level of health.

Jason playfully knocked the kid towards the media room, where Tim owned just about every game under the sun. It was things like that room that served to remind Jason that Tim’s parents were maybe only 99% failures in the parental department. They did _ understand _ their son needed fun things and not just books, hence a specially built media room; but as far as Jason could see they just didn’t understand their _ son_. Before Jason had arrived on the scene to swoon at the sheer magnitude of gamer heaven he was about to receive, the media room had never been used. Most of the games were still wrapped in their plastic. It was a well intentioned gesture, but it highlighted just how very absent they were from their son’s life.

Well, they made up for lost time and got in a couple of vicious rounds of Mario Kart (Tim really was the most competitive little shit. Who _ cheated_) before the doorbell rang.

Jason gritted his teeth at the way Tim’s body language shriveled up. “You go on, kid,” Jason nodded to him. As much as his instinct screamed at him to keep himself between Tim and the tutor, Jason had to be smart about this. He had to get as much information as he could before tipping to his presence. He tracked Tim’s heartbeat to the door and rose to his feet, ready to leap in the second Tim was in distress.

“_Good morning Miss Flores_,” Tim had reverted to protocol droid mode, which Jason always found supremely creepy.

“_How many times, Timothy? Call me Guide Flores. Or Guide Catalina if you like_.”

Huh. The tutor sounded like a young woman, maybe Dick’s age. And the name rang a faint bell too. Had Jason seem her profile in the Batcomputer? That didn’t bode well; there were mostly criminals on there.

Jason yanked out his phone and tapped the FamChat app, went through the insane logon process while keeping half an ear on the conversation going on while more bags of crime-against-humanity muesli and gruel were no doubt not filling space on the shelves. She was espousing some drivel about how Tim was looking plump and that the training wouldn’t work unless he stuck with it.

Jesus, she was really driving the body esteem angle. Tim, plump? Three weeks of Jason’s home cooking had barely made a shade of difference in the kid’s babybird body. Jason could feel his temper beginning to stir.

Finally the logon completed and Jason’s phone screen resolved into the Bat symbol. He brought up the search engine and tapped out _ catalina flores _ in the search field.

His eardrums nearly burst when the phone started ringing.

“_Why are you searching that name _?” an angry, cold, female voice came down the line.

“Jesus fuck BG,” Jason swore. “Can we talk about unhealthy levels of surveillance first?”

Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, aka the most misanthropic Guide on the face of the planet and the only person in the history of the world who told Batman to suck her metaphorical dick – just snorted. “_In this family? This is the fucking healthiest it’s going to get_.”

“We’re not a family,” Jason grunted.

“_You keep telling yourself that, kiddo_,” Barbara replied sweetly. “_You’re talking to someone who knows for a fact that you want that more than anybody. Stop fucking around, I haven’t got a subscription to your issues._”

People thought Batman was a force of nature? Try talking to Batgirl for five seconds. At least Bruce accepted that other people had the right to keep secrets. He _ knew _ everyone’s secrets, but at least gave them the illusion that he didn’t.

Barbara Gordon wasn’t much into illusions.

“Go fuck yourself,” Jason growled. “I’m not telling you squat. You and I had a fucking deal, remember? You take the Dick as far over the horizon as you’ll go and I don’t coat the walls in a nice layer of _ carmen sanguine de la Grayson_. Seriously Babs, I’m lining up his spleen for the paintbrush as we speak.”

“_It’s so sweet you thought that was going to happen and actually work_,” Babs replied unrepentantly. “_Keeping Dick Grayson away from family? In what universe do I have a crowbar that fucking big? Besides, I’m a great believer in democracy. If I get to be miserable, everyone else gets to be too._”

“Hey, you’re the one who agreed to bond with the fucker. That’s not on me,” Jason snapped back. “What’s he done this time?”

“_Motherfucking Roma Marriage Laws," _Babs bit out like every word had spat on her mother’s grave. “_I__ can take the weird flowers no one can pronounce and wouldn’t use for decoration on a bet, I can take the weird bead things and the singing and the fact that he keeps leaving food at my door like a fucking housecat, but I draw the fucking line at a white horse, especially since he somehow got it eleven motherfucking stories up a narrow spiral staircase._”

That gave even Jason a momentary brain fart. “How? And why?” And because it bore repeating. “And _ how_?”

“_Do I look like I give a nanofuck? Really, am I giving you that impression? _ ” Babs huffed. “_I’ve had enough. I looked up a few of the Wanderers traditions of my own. I gave him the List of Impossible Things. He wants to bond properly? He has to get them done._”

“Fuck BG, you fucking _ didn’t_,” Jason groaned. “You said he has to make nice with Bruce and me before you’ll let him off the couch? _ Seriously _? Why do you hate me? What the hell did I ever do to you?”

“_Just let him grovel and then forgive him. Properly this time. Dick’s a two hundred pound bag of poorly dammed emotions just waiting for a hint of an exit. I need to patch the bloody holes so he stops getting his sad all over me, the loser. He would have done that until you gave in anyway; this just saves you time. You’re welcome._”

Jason cursed with vile intent. Fucking Babs. She had no compunctions about striking a weak spot with a sledgehammer if it meant her enormous brain could stop dealing with everybody else’s stupid.

“_Why are you looking up Catalina Flores_?” Babs’ tone brooked no disobedience.

“It’s for a case,” Jason explained, cocking his ear to still listen in to the conversation in the distant kitchen. They’d apparently finished unpacking groceries and were moving in his direction. “A friend of mine’s parents hired her as a Guide tutor; I’m just trying to find out if there’s anything I should know about her.”

“_A friend,_” Babs voice came through slowly. “_Of yours._”

Jason bristled. “Fuck you BG, it’s not like that’s an impossibility for me.”

“_An unbonded Guide friend._”

Jason hung up on her, fuming. It temper wasn’t at all appeased when he listened into Tim and this Flores person talking about him.

“_His name is Robin. He’s my friend_,” Tim was saying.

“_Timothy, _ ” Catalina Flores was the soul of pained patience. “_I__’ve told you, you can’t just go around inviting people in. They’ll be after you for your money._”

“_Robin doesn’t need my money,_” Tim spoke with calm assurance. “_He likes me. We hang out._”

“_Yeah? How would you know exactly? I mean, you don’t score very high on the emotion perception tests do you? That’s why you’re so low ranked. I’m not saying this to hurt you, Timothy; you’ve just got to be really careful about who you let in to your life. Especially now when your training is hitting the critical stage. Any distractions will keep you anchored to the physical plane, just like the cheating you keep doing on your diet. Don’t look at me like that, I _ know _ you’ve been cheating. I’m really disappointed in you, you know? I thought you were committed. I thought you wanted to be a proper Guide._”

That was as far as she got before opening the door of the media room and backpedalling at the look of fury on Jason’s face.

She was about Dick’s age, dark haired, voluptuous and somewhat pouty. She was a Guide but as she barely pinged on Jason’s awareness she couldn’t have been a powerful one.

“Robin?” Tim looked deeply uncertain.

“What?” Catalina gaped at the kid. “You didn’t tell me he was _ here_!”

Tim blinked at her, genuinely perplexed. “You’re a Guide. Couldn’t you sense him?”

Catalina’s flushed with humiliation and anger. She grabbed Tim and shook him. “I try not to invade a person’s privacy, Timothy! And he’s a Sentinel too! See, this right here is why you can’t be trusted to make your own decisions. Letting a unbonded Sentinel sniff around you? Your parents would be thrilled.” She turned to sneer at Jason. “Thought you’d hit the jackpot, didn’t you? Young, unbonded, barely enough of a Guide to spot your lies and rich as well?”

Jason looked darkly at her face and then blackly at the place where she was gripping Tim’s shoulder.

“What? Cat got your tongue?” Catalina’s face twisted in disdain. “Can’t you speak? Or _ Habla no Ingles? _ God, you _ stink _ of the streets. Well your meal ticket ride is at an end, you understand me? Leave. Or I’ll call private security and have them beat you to a pulp before having your mooching ass deported!”

When Jason spoke, it was with every bit of clear diction that Alfred had taught him. He was quiet. He looked her in the eye. “Lady, if you don’t get your slimy claw off Tim in the next three seconds I’ll break every single bone in your arm.”

Catalina paled and actually jerked her hand away at the promise in Jason’s voice. It gave Jason the opportunity to grab Tim and pull him gently but firmly within the circle of his protection.

Catalina fumbled for her phone. “I’m calling security!”

“Yeah? Well I’m calling the police,” Jason waved his phone, ignoring Tim’s noise of dismay. “And the first thing I’ll ask them to check is where the rest of the money from the stipend you get goes after you’ve fed the kid for ten bucks a week.”

Catalina paused. “He’s on a strict diet!” she blustered, but her cheeks went darker. “I am a fully accredited Guide consultant! I train my clients to reach planes of existence they’d never reach otherwise. Breaking away from things that anchor you here is a historically established method!”

“The second thing I’ll ask them,” Jason continued. “Is to check your inner jacket pocket for the controlled substance you’re carting around in there,” Jason sniffed the air delicately. “Peyote? The latino loopy juice?”

Catalina bit her lip, looking furious and frazzled. “It’s not illegal!” she snapped.

“To _ have_, no,” Jason nodded amicably. “_Ingesting _ mescaline, though, is really fucking illegal. I’m not sure you’d pass a blood test. I’m pretty damn sure you wouldn’t pass a hair test. Sentinels,” he shrugged at Catalina infuriated look. “We smell shit like that.”

“Is that what you meant?” Tim cut into this slowly, startling them both. “When you said we were going to try a new way to get me to ascend?”

Jason saw burning red. “You were going to feed that shit to a fucking _ eleven year old_?”

“Nothing else is working!” Catalina retorted. “He’s broken, defective! I don’t know what kind of lies he’s told you but he’s a con artist of the highest order! He’s a twisted, manipulative boy who fakes weakness and illness to get what he wants! Let me guess; the first thing he did when he met you is fake a faint, am I right? I am, aren’t I? See?” she turned to glare disapprovingly at Tim. “He’s done that all throughout his childhood. He’s doing it for the attention. He’s conned you into thinking he’s some sort of damsel in distress! He not! He’s a damaged empath, who’s so repellent in his Guide aura that his parents are uncomfortable around him!”

Jason felt the sensation of nails digging into his palms; Tim was clenching his fists.

“Don’t you see,” Catalina raised her hands beseechingly, taking a few steps closer to Jason. “I’m trying to _ help _ him. The diet, the solitude, the peyote. If I can properly connect him with the spirit plane, I can—”

“What, fix him?” Jason broke it, voice seething. “Have you ever considered that maybe his parents are the fucking problem? Like maybe they never tried to forge any connection to their son? And you know, maybe their discomfort stems from the fact that their son can call them on their bullshit? It’s not very fucking comforting when you’re continually reminded of what a fucking soulless douchecanoe you are, after all.”

“Tim’s fine,” Jason added angrily. “Tim’s a great Guide; as a Sentinel I should fucking know. He’s the most fucking vivid thing in my senses in this room. _ You _ barely blip on them.”

Catalina’s face twisted in anger, before smoothing out to some semblance of calm. “Look, I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding. You want to help Tim. _ I _want to help Tim. We can help him together.”

She touched Jason’s hand.

Something weird happened with Jason’s senses. They seemed to get distant, watery, far away. Like everything was slightly fuzzy at the edges. He hesitated, caught off guard by the sudden lack of influx. There was a huge spectral spider sitting on his arm.

“You see?” Catalina smiled at him. “We’re fine.”

Something was wrong, Jason could feel it. His rage was still there and it was fighting the fuzz. One good thing about living at a point near feral all the time was mental manipulation had an uphill climb to have any effect.

Before he could fully shake it off Tim was there, teeth bared and furious, slamming Catalina back and away from Jason with all his tiny might. “Stay away from him!” Tim shouted furiously. “Don’t you touch him!”

“Really Timothy,” Catalina bared her teeth. “Jealously is so unbecoming.”

Jason shook himself and refocused. He grabbed Tim, hauled him away from Catalina and pulled them both down with Jason wrapped around him.

“Really? Isn’t that going a bit far for little old me?” Catalina asked archly.

“You are not why I’m doing it,” Jason said flatly. “Prepare for the stupid.”

Catalina had just enough time to look completely baffled before Nightwing, fully costumed in daylight, sticks in hand and teeth white in his olive face, crashed headlong through the windows.

“Motherfucker,” Jason swore as broken glass went everywhere. “Ever hear of a fucking door, you jackass?”

Nightwing ignored him. He face was a rictus of rage that Jason had never seen before – not even when they were fighting. Not even when Dick was fighting with Bruce.

“_You_,” he snarled. Auriu was there to pacing and roaring, flashing his big teeth. Even Jason was taken aback by this. Auriu was usually a fucking kitten.

Catalina had gone pale. She stumbled back, nearly tripping over herself. “N-Nightwing… I… you,”

“You were warned, Catalina,” Nightwing growled, spinning his sticks threateningly. “You were _ warned _ to stay away from me and mine.”

“I-I… I did!” Catalina blurted. “I came to Gotham! I stayed out of Bludhaven!” Some of her natural arrogance reasserted itself. “I built a life here! It wasn’t easy; I still can’t get near an ATM! Do you know how hard it is to start a business when you can’t internet bank? I’m trying! I did what was asked of me!” Her eyes were looking shiny, and she looked out from under her lashes. “I… missed you. I still miss you. Don’t you miss me, just a little?” She reached out a hand.

Dick seized up in a way Jason had never seen him seize up and recoil from the touch. Dick Grayson, who was going for the Guinness World record of hugging. Dick Grayson, who patted, poked, snuggled and kissed everyone he knew like that was his version of the handshake. Dick Grayson, the most shameless cuddle slut on the face of the earth, who’d hugged strangers, actual bears and even fucking _ criminals_. The repulsed horror on his face told a story Jason had seen replayed plenty of times on the mean streets where he was raised.

His mother’s story whenever Willis was out of prison. His own, when Catherine was gone and there were no other options for food or shelter.

_ Fuck. That. Shit. _

The next instant Catalina was down, shrieking with a broken nose while an enraged fourteen year old Sentinel stood over her, fist raised. “You lay a fucking finger on my brother and I’ll do a lot fucking worse than break your nose, you bitch!”

“I’ll have you arrested. For assault!” Catalina mumbled past her bloody nose.

Jason’s phone buzzed. He picked up the call, put it on speaker. “It’s for you.”

BG’s voice came through like the wrath of the gods. “_You were fucking warned, you bitch!_”

Catalina gave a fearful squeak and tried desperately to back away from the phone.

“_Catalina Flores,_” Babs poured her power into her voice. “_I declare you INTOLERABLE_, _ here and on every other plane. I cast you OUT!_”

Dick sagged with relief. Barbara Gordon talked a good game, but everybody knew she’d burn the world down for Dick Grayson and not even blink.

Catalina’s eyes rolled up in her head and she fainted dead away, stripped of her spiritual connection, what little she must have had. She was now a soul, alone.

Jason felt a ripple of sickening vertigo and looked around in time to see Tim waver on his feet. “Fuck BG, dial it back a little. I got a kid here!”

“_Fuck, sorry," _Babs moderated her power boiling through her connection with Dick_. “Sorry._”

Jason managed to get Tim to sit with his head in his hands on the couch before two things happened.

One, the police sirens howled up the drive because apparently Babs had called her adoptive father for backup.

Two, Batman showed up; and even his unbreakable poker face was tested by the tableau he swung into.


	7. Totum (the Family Bond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mysteries unravel. Everything unravels. Some of it comes back together, though.

“You love me!”

“Shut up.”

“But you love me!

“Shut the fuck up.”

“You loooooove me!”

“Oh my god, Nightwang, shut the fuck up or I will belt you one,” Jason snapped already regretting letting Nightwing tag along.

It didn’t make a jot of difference, as usual. Dick beamed like it was his last chance to do so, totally immune to the thundercloud hovering over Jason’s head. Jason glared out from where he sat on the guardrail over the promenade where he’d first met Tim, waiting for the kid to arrive.

It was now three days post Flores Incident. A lot of shit had happened.

There had been questions asked – but B could make a lie on the spot that sounded totally credible. Turns out the peyote that fucking bitch of a Guide had procured had been from a common source with the Bogatagon designer drugs; thus, Batman neatly explained his and Nightwing’s presence in the Drake Estate. He even explained the hole where the window had been – they’d been on surveillance only until a young Guide had been in danger of being fed a psychotropic against his will and against all common sense.

Jason had just been the slightly hapless neighbor who had come to play video games with the only other kid for miles around. Jason _ had _ copped to punching Catalina but sometimes being seen as nothing more than a feral street rat was useful. Jason wasn’t _ expected _ to have any self control. The uniforms all bought it. Jim Gordon didn’t, but then again he was Commissioner for a reason. He didn’t seem overly motivated to tease out the truth of it.

So Catalina Flores was now incarcerated and, if Jason knew anything about Barbara Gordon’s bottomless well of carefully crafted vengeance, she wouldn’t see daylight for a long time.

Jason couldn’t give a fuck about any of this, because the unintended side effect of the whole mess was that Tim Drake was now, in effect, a ward of the state. Commissioner Gordon had _ not _ been pleased to learn that an eleven year old had been left with only nominal supervision from what had turned out to be an abusive caregiver. He was even less impressed when he’d been informed by Tim that his parents didn’t have a satellite phone, Skype or any other means of contact that could be used at any time. The straw that broke the Commissioners back was Tim’s reluctant admission that this had been more or less the way of things since he was eight.

Papers to remove Tim Drake from the custody of his parents because of criminal negligence had been filed within the hour.

What had really burned Jason at the time was the one time they could have used Brucie Wayne bumbling onto the scene would have been right then. Bruce Wayne was a rare animal in social services – a fully accredited Sentinel and Guide trained foster parent with a proven track record. But Batman had been on the scene first; having Bruce Wayne show up right after Batman left would have been too neat, even with the protection offered by the Clypeus.

Jason got it; B’s partner had dropped whatever they were discussing (fighting) about, geared up and then run hell bent of leather over the horizon. Batman had suited up to follow him on the not unreasonable assumption that some mass event had sparked the Golden Boy’s Sentinel imperative. But fuck, the one time they needed Bruce more than Batman, all they had was fucking Batman.

Jason was forced to watch, helpless and angry about it, as a miserable Tim was loaded into Jim Gordon’s sedan. He managed to get his phone into the kid’s hands, so he had a line of connection with him but it hadn’t been much fucking consolation.

The sympathica proved a godsend in the next few days. Jason knew that Tim didn’t go to bed hungry, that he was warm, that he had access to a computer, though probably not to the coffee that was his lifeblood. He was an unbelievable caffeine fiend in training, the little brat.

That’s why he had a coffee can tucked into his utility belt, waiting for said brat to show up.

Fortunately, Tim had a window where he could slip his well intended but overly smothering caregivers and get to the complex; or so he’d told Jason over the phone.

_ Unfortunately_, Jason wasn’t waiting alone. Dick wanted to meet Tim.

“Try not to fume too much over B,” Dick advised him ruefully, clad in his stupid fingerstripes and still grinning like a loon. “He does actually have the ability to pull his head out of his ass. It just takes him a minute to get there.”

Jason scowled behind his mask. “Fucking paranoid asshole,” he muttered under his breath. He currently wasn’t talking to Bruce because Bruce _ was _ being an asshole. He hadn’t raised his hand to take Tim in yet. Jason had already had a knock down drag out fight with him over it.

“Yep. That’s practically his twitter profile,” Dick agreed cheerfully.

Jason could admit it was kind of… _ useful _ to have someone to commiserate with over Bruce’s terminal Bruceness. He wouldn’t let Tim get close to the family until they found out who was teaching the kid. Catalina Flores sure as shit didn’t teach him the evanidus or anything else. She was, as BG had succinctly stated ‘_a one-tenth of a trick pony with the emotional perception of a dead slug_’.

But that left the question – who the hell _ had _ taught Tim techniques out of the League of Assassin’s manuals?

“But,” Dick continued while Jason glowered. “He’s not totally doing nothing. He pulled some strings to get the kid under the care of Jim Gordon. That’s a hell of a lot better than a Centre halfway house or a group home.”

Jason knew that; it was pretty much the reason Batman wasn’t walking around with a broken nose. It wasn’t _ enough _ though. “I can’t believe he fucking thinks that kid might still be League,” Jason growled angrily. “Is he fucking blind? Was he even looking at the same kid we were?”

Dick shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder just how bad the League fucked up B. I mean, they did train him; he has to, in a sense, think like them. He understands their world view, sad as that sounds. They take ‘em young. So does B, if you think about it.”

Jason made a face. That little parallel hadn’t occurred to him and yet here he was, too young for sex (ha!), too young to smoke (double ha! Though the intensity of his training had cut that habit back to zilch since he needed every inch of lung capacity to survive gaining his level of fitness) and too young to drink (yeah, Jason’s not admitting to anything there) but still old enough to take on guys with guns, walk murder scenes and profile serial killers. For all his distaste for what the League stood for, Bruce was still, in a sense, indoctrinated to their ways.

“They taught him to view the world like it has nothing but enemies,” Dick sighed. “Usually he logics his way out of that mess, but it does take him a minute. Be patient. He’ll get there. And, I hate to play Bats Advocate here, but the case is still ongoing. We still have to find out who trained the kid.”

_ Fuck the stupid case _ Jason wanted to say, but couldn’t. B was all Mission and Dick was a cop. They didn’t think like that. “I’ve been in that kid’s life for weeks. I’ve cloned his phone, I’ve put telltales on his computer and bat bugs just about anywhere they’ll fit. I’ve profiled all his school teachers and checked out all the students who show the remotest bit of interest in him. I’ve sat in on every one of the overachieving little brat’s extracurricular classes and ran checks on his teachers too. I haven’t found evidence of _ squat_. If there’s League in his life, I’m not seeing it. Maybe I’ll never see it. Maybe it’s not fucking _ there_.”

“That doesn’t mean the case is closed, Robin,” Nightwing gently pointed out.

“Fuck you, I know that. I’m just saying that it isn’t the League. Fuck only knows what it _ is_. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I’ll find out and then case closed. Then we can focus on the real problem, like him needing—” Jason stopped and frowned down at his hands. They were shaking.

Nightwing blinked in surprise. “Little Wing?”

“Case closed,” said a flat voice behind them. They jumped and spun, ready for a right.

“Babybird?” Jason had a sinking sensation in his chest and it wasn’t sympathica related.

Tim was there, as white as a ghost, pressing his shaking hands to his chest. “Nobody taught me,” he continued in the same flat tone. “I taught myself. My parents gave me an old document from their collection for my birthday when I was six. I discovered hidden writing on it. All the old techniques that Guides used to know. That’s how I learned it. So… case closed.”

Jason was surprised by the wave of misery that hit his chest like a tidal wave. _ Jesus_, Babybird was so upset he was projecting. “Tim, wait a minute—”

But Tim was off and running in the opposite direction, trying to get as far away as fast as he could.

“_ Fuck_,” Jason cursed.

“That,” Dick summarized sadly. “Did not go well. How much do you think he heard?”

“Not the fucking right bit, that’s for damn sure,” Jason snapped before taking off after the kid. “Tim, wait!”

Dick kept apace with him and they were both stretching with their senses, but the minute Tim had rounded a corner…

“What the...?” Dick skidded to a halt in shock. “I lost him!”

“Evanidus,” Jason explained tersely. “Shut up for a second, let me concentrate.”

His senses were stretching out, but this time Jason was looking for the place they couldn’t grasp. The sympathica made him feel like his lungs were burning and his feet were pounding on a hard surface. The kid was still running.

There was a ghostly wetness in his eyes and cheeks. _ Fuck_, he was crying too.

Jason found a blank spot in his senses heading deeper into the amusement park where the rides had all been set up. Cursing up a storm, Jason told Dick to hang back in case the kid rabbited back towards the entry gates and then went full tilt sprint in the direction of the Ferris wheel. He closed on the kid easily; Tim still wasn’t up to optimal yet.

“Tim,” Jason hesitated when he got near the old novelty stands, now empty and decayed. “C’mon babybird, I know you’re here. Look, I dunno what you _ think _ you heard but—” Jason heard a slight rattle as the kid took off again. “Tim, wait!”

Darcy had appeared beside him sometime in his run. He was now sniffing around Jason’s feet. “I don’t guess you can find him?” Jason was getting some psychosomatic input from his hands now, but he couldn’t parse what it was. There was a phantom pull in his shoulders. Was the kid climbing something?

Darcy didn’t immediately dart off, which was frustrating. He did calmly look upwards.

Towards the Ferris wheel, now a half rusted wreck.

Circling it was a small bird whose shape Jason absolutely recognized.

“Fuck,” Jason went for the wheel like mad dogs were chasing him. Tim must not be thinking clearly. Babybird was afraid of heights… well, not heights, exactly, because he tracked Batman and Robin across rooftops readily enough. But he didn’t like looking _ down _ from a height at all.

Sure enough, Jason found him locked up at the top of the Ferris wheel maintenance ladder, unable to go further and too terrified to go down again. The ladder was as rusted as the rest of it and rattled ominously when Jason put his weight on it. Tim let out a high pitched sound of fear.

“Don’t move, babybird,” Jason yelled up to him. “I’m coming for ya!”

Robin seized his grapple gun and hefted himself up the first arm of the wheel, clambering up on it with undignified haste before grappling to the next. He made his way up the wheel that way, fighting his way through a mass of crisscrossing struts and beams towards the centre, listening all the while to ominous noises that the ladder Tim clung to was making.

He hauled his way to the middle where there was a kind of curved platform that could be stood upon in the hub of the wheel and a service hatch which Robin yanked open to reveal a frightened Tim who had been reaching for the hatch himself. Robin could see why; the ladder was starting to peel off what was left of whatever was bolting it to the inner stanchion.

Robin reached in and snatched at Tim’s hand, unceremoniously yanking him out of the tube and onto the relative safety of the platform. “Gotcha!” Jason cried as the ladder gave way in a series of deafening clangs and screeches that made him grit his teeth.

Tim accepted the arm around his shoulders for a moment or two while he recovered, but then pushed Jason away – though stuck where he was for the moment, all the kid could do after that was stubbornly flop down on the platform with his knees drawn up to his chest and not look at Jason at all.

Jason sighed and sat down next to him. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

Jason grimaced. “Look, Tim—”

“It’s alright,” Tim cut in, still not looking at Jason. He started out over the vista of the ruined park, eye bleak. “I get it. You had to investigate me. It wasn’t personal. You don’t have to pretend.”

“Oh, fuck _ that_, babybird,” Jason protested vehemently. “I wasn’t pretending to be your friend!”

Tim shot him a look of such cold disbelief that Jason drew up. “It doesn’t matter,” Tim told him flatly. He was doing his best to be dignified about this, but he’d still clearly been crying and his eyes were empty. “You don’t have to hang out with me because you feel sorry for me either. You’re behind the Wall. I don’t even know your _ name_.”

Jason cursed Bat paranoia in his head. “Okay, _ yes_, I was ordered to investigate you but fuck, babybird, I’m a fucking Sentinel and you’ve got zero sense of your surroundings unless you’re really focusing. If I wanted to watch you from a distance, I could have done that easily. It would have been safer for me to do that. I didn’t. I didn’t because I liked hanging out with you. I don’t feel sorry for—okay, full disclosure, I do feel sorry for you because your parents are fucking lousy but that came _ after _ I was your friend, not because of it.”

Tim hunched inward. “It’s okay. It’s okay if you’re not. My friend, I mean,” he said in a small voice. “I told you I can’t make people happy. I’m used to that, it doesn’t bother me. You don’t have to pretend to make me feel better.”

“Well I’m glad it’s okay if I’m not your friend,” Jason’s tone dripped with unmistakable sarcasm, which pricked enough to make Tim look at him. “Is it okay if I _ am _ your friend too? Look, I get it, kid. People don’t stay. You think I don’t get that? Being alone and there’s no one there to turn to, no one who’ll listen to you, who thinks you’re vital? I thought that too, once. Still do, really. I’m a lousy Robin. Everyone knows it; everyone can tell.”

Tim opened his mouth to protest this but Jason talked right over him.

“I absolutely believed that. I thought I was just the stupid guy trying to fill shoes that weren’t his, that would never _ be _ his. I was sloppy seconds, the cheap substitute for the real deal. I never felt like a Robin should feel about being Robin,” Jason took a breath. “And then I met you. You who, despite a fucking Wall the size of a skyscraper, really saw me. And you liked me. You liked me even more than the first one and you laid out your case for why and it all made so much sense. You really believe that I’m not just doing the job, I’m doing a _ better _ job. I never felt like a hero until someone actually pointed out to me that I _ was _ one to them, like you did. You have no idea how much that meant to me.”

“Oh,” Tim looked uncertain again, but at least he was looking at Jason. Then he blurted. “But… why me? I’m just Tim. Just…Tim.”

“No one’s ever…” Jason swallowed, because this kid was breaking his fucking heart. “I’ve spent my life around people who make excuses as to why they won’t fucking act when they see something wrong in the world. ‘Oh we would but’ what-the-fuck-ever. Or ‘someone should’, as if they’re not included in being fucking _ someone_. All those people who would and should? Nobody does and nobody will. Except you. You can and you do and even where you can’t you try. That makes you fucking special, kid. Why shouldn’t I like you?”

Tim didn’t seem to have an answer for this. His cheeks were bright pink. Jason decided to let that sit for a while, but he did sidle closer to Tim so they could watch the sunset over the horizon.

Unbeknownst to them, they were being watched.

Batman and Nightwing watched from the top of the rollercoaster, hidden from direct sight.

“And?” Batman asked Nighwing tersely

“They’re cute together,” Nightwing grinned at the pair, who were sharing coffee.

_ “Nightwing _...”

Dick rolled his eyes. “Relax B. Of the two subjects involved only one is producing any kind of sex steroid and given that Robin II is nearly as tall as I am now it shouldn’t be a surprise he’s jonesing on testosterone. It’s in line with his somatotropin levels – that’s growth hormone in case you’re rusty on your biochem. He’s going to be a big boy, so that’s about what I’d expect from him at this age. His levels don’t go up when he’s around the kid and neither of them are secreting a single pheromone between them – no androstenol, androstadienone or androstenone. They _ are _producing scents in synch which lead me to believe they’re producing oxytocins and dopamine.”

Batman grimaced. “Trust hormone and pleasure receptors.”

“Don’t say it like they’re bad words, B,” Dick replied dryly. “When people who like each other interact with each other, they feel _ happy _ and _ safe_. Just take a minute to digest that, I know it’s basically a foreign concept for you.”

Batman continued obstinately. “If the bond is nascent it could be manifesting without the sexual element because of their ages. Puberty is required to pass before the brain has the chemical and neurological infrastructure required to support a bond.”

“So... what exactly is the problem here?” Nightwing cocked his head. “If they _ do _ have a nascent bond, so what? A) we’re sure as hell aren’t going to find it and B) you’ve pretty much just said nothing is going to happen until they’re both on the same page development wise anyway.”

“Being past puberty is _ not _ the same as being of the age of consent, officer,” Batman replied pointedly.

Dick threw up his hands, exasperated. “So sit ‘em down and show ‘em the sex talk powerpoint – you know, the one I’m still in therapy about – make sure they understand how fucked up their brain chemistry is going to make their decision making process. Make sure they understand that they’re not required to do anything about it until they’re _ both _ ready and until then there are bond suppressants a-plenty. Jesus B, you’re acting like dealing with an oversexed and underaged teen is like virgin territory for you. Pun intended. After you dealt with my sexual awakening,” he smirked as Bruce flinched. “This will be a cakewalk. Come on, they’re smart kids, they’ll follow the chain of it if you lay it out. And I’d also like to point out that unless you’re planning on cutting Jason off from the kid and locking him in the Wayne Ivory Tower – which I’m as sure you have as I’m sure you _ won’t _ be able to keep him, by the way – whatever this _ is_, you’re stuck with it _ as _ is. You might as well suck it up and deal.”

Brooding silence, which was practically B’s native language.

Dick sighed. “Have you considered the possibility that this is all in your paranoid little bat-brain? Come on, you’re a detective – show me the evidence. All I see, smell and hear are two boys who light up around each other. There’s no proof it has anything to do with Sentinels and Guides but I see plenty of evidence that they’re both pretty goddamn lonely souls. Maybe, just maybe, he’s made a _ friend _ who he, against all odds, _ likes to hang out with_. I’m sorry B, but maybe they only problem here is you’ve gone and got yourself a Real Boy.”

“There’s something _ there_, I can sense it,” Batman sounded frustrated.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t automatically make it bad, B.”

“The unknown tends to bite us when stop looking its way,” Batman retorted grimly. “Robin is my... my responsibility. I can’t afford to take a risk.”

“He’s your son,” Dick corrected him gently. “You can say it, you know.”

Batman said nothing, but he didn’t disagree either.

“Let it be,” Dick advised him. “Let _ them _ be. You heard what Little Wing said. He still doesn’t feel like he’s welcome, even nearly three years in. We’re both fucking lousy at making him feel like a part of the family. You learn to love by loving. Let him love the kid. Let the kid love him back. Jason needs this. They both need it.”

Batman listened to the two boys on the Ferris wheel laughing about something; for all that one was armoured and masked, they still sounded like two totally normal kids.

He gave in. “Very well,” Batman sounded like the soul of grudging.

Beneath the cowl, Bruce Wayne smiled. His son had made a friend.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand that a wrap. Hope you enjoyed. A couple of quick notes and explanations about this story:
> 
> Universe Weirdness: Aside from the whole Sentinel/Guide business, obviously, it should be worthwhile to note the when I did this fic I was writing for the DCEU movie 'verse. There was a companion story between Batman and Superman that I also wrote for the challenge. 
> 
> So in case you were wondering why Jason Todd was packing a Robinata where Jason Todd of the comics wasn't in any way a staff bearer, that's why. The uniform in the display case in the movies very clearly showed a staff with a hook blade - hence, the Robinata. He also (though it was never explicitly stated in the fic) was not wearing the famous green-panty uniform. Ahem. #letallrobinswearpants2k19
> 
> Tim and the Wall: Just to clarify (all kudos to redrobinfection for spotting it), Tim has, in effect and very *crudely*, built a his own Clypeus to cleave the knowledge of Batman & Co's identities, only his is inside his own head, to try to keep from slamming into Bruce's, which is everywhere but his head. He's trained himself to think 'Batman' when he sees Bruce Wayne and any unconscious connection he tries, with his Wall, to *keep* unconscious. It took him a long time and a lot of fainting and migraines to get to the point where he could get through a day of Batman watching. His brain built parts of it subconsciously as a defence system while it was still developing. Unfortunately his Wall is full of holes since it's extremely difficult to cleave your own mind in two from the inside. Lizzy tries to buffer him from the effects to the point where her presence helps him recover from a faceplant faster, but it also helps that he doesn't really get to meet Bruce Wayne & Co in person very much either. He has hit the Wall at more than one gala, so his parents stopped taking him to them.


End file.
